Is Microsoft Paying To Influence UN Standards?

PizzaFace writes "Microsoft is reported to be spending strategically to influence the United Nations' standards for business data exchange. A UN standards-setting body, UN/CEFACT, and an industry-standards group, OASIS, had developed an open standard format for data interchange, called ebXML. Microsoft hired two people from UN/CEFACT, and a few months later the body decided to stop working on ebXML and instead to work on a Business Collaboration Framework for web services, promoted by Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft then paid for three UN committee members to travel to six countries to promote the BCF."

Comments

No - the price is too cheap

[MrRTFM]

I hardly think that this particular article rates as a big deal.

All technical issues aside, if a damn UN standards-setting body is influenced in their decision by a couple of hotel stays and some plane tickets (which, they would have gotten anyway), then there is no hope for any of us - we might as well accept our clippy enhanced future now.
Hmmmm... or maybe there is - hell, if could raise $10 grand maybe I could get a new standard which lets me get master control over something. :)

Re:No - the price is too cheap

[emtboy9]

Do you know how much these people earn?


No... do you? But think about it this way. Even if the UN ambassadors are not as well paid (and their salaries do come from their respective countries) as the "average politician" in their countries, you can rest assured that they ARE paid much much more than the "average citizen" that they claim to represent. Such is the same with any politician. Pols are ALWAYS paid more than they are worth, and always make far more than the people they represent.

Being flown around by MS is a big perk for these people. And I bet the MS PR folk really know how to perk up a lowley UN grunts ego to boot...


I doubt it. UN officials (or at least the ones that sit on committees like this) dont fly business class. And first class tickets cost the same no matter who is paying for it.

NOW, if MS was flying them around on their own fleet of private Jets, that is something else entirely. And besides, the lowley UN grunt doesnt sit in committee in the UN building collecting checks from multinationals... the lowley UN grunt is on the ground in Kenya, or Bosnia, or Iraq, or somewhere like that, handing out rice, giving innoculations to children and other such things. Often for months at a time, in some of the worst imaginable conditions.

The ones who sit in committee would never even set foot in most countries they claim to be looking out for, unless it was for a chauffered ride to the presidential mansion, or palace of whatever country it is...

And even the ones who are high up the food chain, who DO happen to get their hands dirty every so often do so under far more security and protection than even common diplomats get.

I imagine that they are getting far more than a couple plane rides and a hotel room...

Re:No - the price is too cheap

[AKnightCowboy]

All technical issues aside, if a damn UN standards-setting body is influenced in their decision by a couple of hotel stays and some plane tickets (which, they would have gotten anyway), then there is no hope for any of us - we might as well accept our clippy enhanced future now.

Microsoft also hired 2 members of the group. This is a pretty standard corporate tactic. Find someone who you can influence to take an early retirement from their influential position, hire them to come work for Halliburton or the Carlyle Group (thrown in for our liberal conspiracy theorist friends) and then pay them a salary of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be a consultant. It increases your chances of getting that government contract a hundredfold since the "consultant" is still buddy-buddy with all his old procurement friends at the office. I'm not suprised the corruption has extended to the UN in a similar fashion.

Re:No - the price is too cheap

[defMan]

No... do you? But think about it this way. Even if the UN ambassadors are not as well paid (and their salaries do come from their respective countries) as the "average politician" in their countries, you can rest assured that they ARE paid much much more than the "average citizen" that they claim to represent. Such is the same with any politician. Pols are ALWAYS paid more than they are worth, and always make far more than the people they represent.

The dutch socialist party takes the salary from their politicians and pays them an average salary (couldn't find how much directly). The money which is left over is used for campaigns and party activities.

So there are politicians which are a notable exception here.

Re:No - the price is too cheap

[lacrymology.com]

"And I bet the MS PR folk really know how to perk up a lowley UN grunts ego to boot..."

I can see it now:

M$: We wrote this operating system JUST FOR YOU. We even named it after you.

UN Grunt: WOW! Windows Me. I like the sound of that.

M$: (evil laughter)

-m

Re:No - the price is too cheap

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Pols are ALWAYS paid more than they are worth, and always make far more than the people they represent.

Bullshit. My father was on the city council of our town for several years, and until the last year, was unpaid for the service. Even when a ballot initiative passed to make it a paid position, it paid less than $20k a year. Despite that, he spent 30 or 40 hours a week meeting with constituents, reading memos and reports, attending council meetings, budget meetings, pension board meetings, planning board meetings... There are people who serve in public office because they want to make things better. Not everyone is just in it for themselves.

Surely not!

[tomcrick]

No way, I am flabbergasted that someone would even suggest that Microsoft would do something as underhand as this.

I for one will stand up and defend...err.....hold on....

If you believe so

[gazbo]

Then don't you think the real heart of the problem is that the standards boards consist of people of such negotiable ethics and opinions?

This is not surprising

[Enoch Root]

This is not especially surprising, considering the number of large businesses that lobby and otherwise bride their way through government.

At least Microsoft is not getting their buddies elected or, say, preventing security standards from cutting their operation costs at the detriment of their employees and customers' safety.

Swinging one way or the other on a data exchange standard seems pretty harmless to me. But I guess this is the 'excuse du jour' for some quality MS-bashing...

Re:This is not surprising

[Elvisisdead]

Agreed that this is not surprising. There are tons of lobbying groups that do this kind of thing every year. One of the bigger trips each year is the "Korea trip" for congressional aides.

Essentially, the S. Korean chamber of commerce gets together and flies around 20 staffers over for 10 days in 5 star hotels, and all-expenses paid fun. Sure, they tour some factories and hear some presentations, but it's mainly a free vacation. Lots of companies/lobbying gropus do similar trips within the US, as well. Sugar cane growers will take staffers to south Florida. The tobacco lobby takes folks to resorts in NC. The military lets military issues staffers stay on board aircraft carriers, etc.

In this particular instance, MS is playing by the well-established rules for this type of thing.

Moral Dilemma!

[rherbert]

Microsoft bad... IBM good... so... confused....

Weird

[bored_SuSE_user]

The article mentions that the work on the Open XML standard was complete and their website shows that this standard will be used in the 'Business Colloboration Model'....so where is the problem?
The site doesn't mention Windows or Windows-based systems anywhere, nor does it mention Microsoft. With IBM so heavily supporting *nix based systems, I doubt MS can wriggle their way into making the standards supported only on their platform, otherwise it's not really a standard....

Re:Weird

[santos_douglas]

I took a database class with Dr. William McCarthy last semester. He was on the standard's setting comittee and actually spent some time in class relaying this whole story to us. Needless to say he confirmed pretty much everything I'm reading here.

His take seemed to be that this standard was complete in name only, just to have something to show for their efforts. But most of the specialists stopped contributing to it after the MS mess became known.

He understood Microsoft's desire to influence the standards, but most lobbying is done explicitly. I think they reacted so negatively because they were obviously trying to hide their influence, yet pretend to be having an open and impartial standards setting group.

Most of the technology people involved were primarily concerned with making the standard open to even the smallest and poorest businesses and countries worldwide, and when they found out about this they just weren't happy at all.

"Spending Strategically" ???

[cHALiTO]

It used to be "Bribing"
Then it was "lobbying"
Now it's "Spending Strategically"

bs

Re:"Spending Strategically" ???

[ozbird]

To paraphrase Bernard from "Yes Minister", It's one of those irregular verbs:
I spend strategically, you lobby, he bribes.

Maybe I'm just insufficiently cynical...

[chrisbtoo]

... but the "stop working on ebXML" link seems to suggest that the work was deemed complete, rather than being shitcanned. Also, as the summary says, the BCF stuff is being promoted by both MS and IBM - both of whom are OASIS members.

/shrug

Lobbyism

[broothal]

Please enlighten me as to why this is news? This happens every day! It's called lobbying. Is it because it's the mother of all evil megacorps that's doing the lobbying?

Here's wikipedia's definition of lobyism.

ebxml and bcf are on a somewhat different level

[Reinout]

Reading the article (yes, I did :-), it didn't seem so clear-cut to me. In the article, ebxml and bcf are placed in front of eachother as direct competitors.

From an ebXML Business Process Specification Schema announcement and a BCF faq I figured that ebxml provides a number of services (like repositories) and a number of high-level xml specifications.

The first item, services, seems to do some of the same things as soap, uddl, etc, the webservices stuff (1). This seems to be the major area where IBM and MS try to convince people to use their (webservices) solutions instead of the ebxml solutions.

The second item , the high-level xml specifications, seems to lack a few things that weren't included in ebxml proper, like the "UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology -- Meta Model". These (or solutions based on it) are now developed separately by the UN under the name of BCF. But this is more of a layer building upon the existing ebxml work.

So: ebxml's services see some flak from webservices (ibm+ms) and the UN acknowledges that this is a possible alternative implementation. On the other hand, the UN builds upon ebxml by adding the BCF layer, making it more useful.

At least, that's my guess from the info!

Reinout

p.s. 1): for REST-proponents: I like the REST approach more than the SOAP one :-)

Serious, yes, but...

[sdo1]

I simply can't take an article seriously that starts "PizzaFace writes..."

-S

maybe the UN...

[ajagci]

shouldn't get involved in the definition of XML standards at all. After all, we already have several excellent international, neutral standards bodies that worry about this sort of thing.

Why are they working on this

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are all up in arms about how Microsoft is corrupting the process and buying people. But I think that misses the point. Why is the UN working on international business practices? Who asked them to? Why do we need it?

The UN should work on foster better relations between countries. They should work on eliminating all WMDs (even those in the first world) They should cure hunger and famine and disesase and educate the world. They should work toward universal human rights. And when they have accomlished that, disband.

We don't need a world body to help business, they can do that perfectly well on their own. And to do so, only opens up the possibility of corruption with no concievable gain. Why is even as single penny of UN money or a single second of UN time going to this effort when much more pressing needs exist?

New category for stories...

[GreenKiwi]

Slashdot needs to create another category for some of their stories. The "No shit Sherlock!" category.

Re:yes, why not?

[nycsubway]

I worked for an insurance company when it was in the process of merging with a bank in the largest merger in history in the US. The merged company became Citigroup. The only problem with the merger was that there were laws preventing insurance companies from merging with banks.

As the merger went along, the attitude was that 'were waiting to get the appropriate legislation passed'. It was very matter of fact, that they knew the laws were going to change to allow them to merge... because they changed them!

Big companies have influence!

Re:Double edged Sword

[klosskorban]

How much has Linux Offered?? Hello! Think about it, They have offered everything! Free now, free later take all you want, displace $500 billion in proprietary software if you want no problem, its still free, while your there take a little more, no problem, want some more ? sure help yourself.

Becoming common practice.

[SgtChaireBourne]

Over the last few years, it's becoming increasingly common practice for MS to hire insiders to plug MS products and protocols. For example, since Bob Garfield was hired from NPR, NPR has begun not only rebroadcasting content from MS, but also increasing product mentions on air as well as soft pedaling (MS-only) security and anti-trust issues. Moles have also been hired by MS and then restored to government positions in the U.S., Finland, and Norway, just to name a few.

I chalk it up to a need to replace old revenue streams before they dry up, or before security and anti-trust penalties take it down for the count, before the company gets a proper audit...

'Course all that's moot if Joe Sixpack figures out that Windows is not ready for the Internet, but that Linux, BSD and OS X are, plus cost effective and easy to use.