Skip to content

8. Open Standards & Best Practices

Jump to bottom
Bolaji Ayodeji edited this page Aug 28, 2024 · 34 revisions

Note

Indicator Requirement: "Digital public goods must be designed and developed to align with relevant standards, best practices, and/or principles."

For this indicator, you must provide a list of the open standards, best practices, and principles that your digital solution adheres to with relevant links wherever possible. For best practices regarding open source software solutions, particularly for organizations involved in developing and maintaining software and policy together, please refer to The Standard For Public Code. Below are some open standards and best practices recommendations.

Open Standards

Open standards are protocols and building blocks that make digital public goods work better and connect more easily. They help developers create products faster and let data files be read or written by anyone. Here are some common open standards by category:


Accessibility

WCAG 2.0/2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
Authentication & Authorization
  • OAuth 2 (Open Authorization 2)
  • OIDC (OpenID Connect)
  • JWT (JSON Web Tokens)
  • SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)
  • XACML 3.0 (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language)
Computer Communications Protocols
  • WebSocket
  • TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
  • HTTP/HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol/Secure)
  • SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security)
  • MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport)
Data Exchange/Configuration Formats
  • JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
  • YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language)
  • XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
  • TOML (Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language)
  • CSV (Comma-Separated Values)
  • TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
  • HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format version 5)
  • RDF (Resource Description Framework)
  • Geographic Information System (GIS)
  • GeoPackage (Geospatial Package)
  • GeoTIFF (Georeferenced Tagged Image File Format)
Internationalization (i18n)
  • UTF-8
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ASCII
Multimedia
  • SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
  • PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
  • JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
  • Ogg MP3 (Moving Picture Experts Group: Audio Layer III)
  • FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
  • H.264 (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC)
  • AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)
  • MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3)
  • MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14)
Security
  • ISO/IEC 27001 (Information Security Management)
  • ISO/IEC 27018:2019 (Information technology — Security techniques — Code of practice for protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in public clouds acting as PII processors)
  • PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
  • HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure)
  • SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
  • SSH (Secure Shell)
  • GPG (GNU Privacy Guard)
  • RS256 (RSA Signature with SHA-256)
  • HS256 (HMAC with SHA-256)
  • AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)
  • ES256 (Elliptic Curve Signature with SHA-256)
Software Testing
  • IEEE 829 (IEEE Standard for Software and System Test Documentation)
  • ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 (Software Testing)
  • Business Process Modelling
  • BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation 2.0)
  • Credentialing
  • W3C VC (World Wide Web Consortium Verifiable Credentials)
Standard Content Formats
  • PDF (Portable Document Format)
  • H5P (HTML5 Package)
  • ePub (Electronic Publication)
  • WebM (Web Media)
Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR)
  • WebXR (Web Extended Reality)
  • IEEE Digital Reality standards (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Digital Reality standards)
Web Standards
  • HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
  • CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
  • ECMAScript (ES 5/6/7) (ECMAScript 5/6/7)
  • LaTeX (Lamport TeX)
Sector-Specific Standards
  • FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)
  • openEHR (open Electronic Health Record)
  • OpenHIE (Open Health Information Exchange)
  • OMOP (Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership) Common Data Model
  • OCDS (Open Contracting Data Standard)
  • Open Fiscal Data Package
  • International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard
  • GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification)
  • BODS (Beneficial Ownership Data Standard)
  • ISO 37002:2021 (Whistleblowing Management Systems — Guidelines)

Best Practices

Below are some of the common best practices and principles implemented by several digital public goods:

Architectural Design

Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning (AI/ ML)

Best practices to help secure your IT resources:

  • Create strong passwords for username/ password authentication
  • Enable Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
  • Enable resource access authorization i.e. access control rights/ permissions
  • Leverage IT auditing
  • Protect data at rest (data encryption, using a firewall, antivirus protection, schedule backups)
  • Protect data in transit (encrypt data in transit using TLS/SSL, authenticate data integrity using TLS/SSL, use X.509 certificates to authenticate the remote end)

Cloud Computing

Coding Styles & Standards

Data Principles:

ICT4D

Open Source

Software Architectural Styles

  • Multitier architecture
  • Model–view–controller
  • Representational state transfer (REST)
  • Publish-subscribe
  • Client-server (multitier architecture exhibits this style)
  • Monolithic application
  • Service-oriented
  • Component-based
  • Peer-to-peer
  • Asynchronous messaging
  • Event-driven
  • Database-centric
  • Sensor-controller-actuator
  • Cloud computing patterns

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

User Interface/ User Experience (UI /UX)

Virtual Reality/ Augmented Reality (VR /AR)

Open AI Systems

Open Standards

Best Practices

Open Data

Open Standards

Open Data should be available in a usable form, free from reproduction costs, and reused without restrictions. This universal participation ensures that the data can be used, modified, and shared without discrimination, promoting universal access and reuse without any restrictions on reproduction costs.

Below are links to more information regarding Open Data Standards:

Best Practices

📌 Open Data practices are closely tied with data ethics and the Open Data Institute has developed "The Data Ethics Canvas" which helps to identify and manage ethical issues.

Below are links to more information regarding Open Data Best Practices:

Open Content

Open Standards

Access to information can be made easier, cooperation and innovation can be fostered, and the quality and diversity of content can be improved thanks to open content. Not all open content, though, is created equal. To ensure that open content is useful, reliable, and engaging, it is important to follow some well-known standards for producing and sharing it.

A good open content standard should contain the following elements:

  • A clear and explicit license that grants everyone free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities: retain, revise, remix, reuse, and redistribute the content.
  • A specification of the format, structure, and metadata of the content that enables interoperability, accessibility, and discoverability across different platforms and devices.
  • A description of the process and criteria for developing, maintaining, and updating the content that ensures quality, relevance, and diversity of perspectives.

Here are some sites that contain resources about well-known standards for open content:

Best Practices

To ensure that open content is useful, reliable, and engaging, it is important to follow some best practices for producing and sharing it. Here are some sites that contain resources about best practices for open content:

Digital Public Goods (DPGs) are open-source software, open data, open AI systems, and open content collections that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If you have any questions regarding the DPG application process or anything else, you can ask directly to the DPG Community for guidance or send us an email; we're available to help you.


Digital Public Goods Badge
Clone this wiki locally