I've been thinking a lot about the whole Data Portability Initiative, and I am a supporter of its mission. The biggest challenge for the group is keeping expectations low and projects achievable. After reading Scoble's post and comments on the Road Blocks to Data Portablity I have got Deja Vu all over again. Too many people think this is a straightforward thing to do. The problem space sounds trivial when people say we just need a set of principles and a set of open standards to facilitate those principles. If we try and make a system that enables ANY Web service to simply "hook in" and share and accept users and their data, the problem space is too large as Scoble is discovering. Federated services and users with Search/Read/Write/Delete is a rat's nest.

One of my companies had been involved in a functionally similar (but granted significantly different in objective) problem space in Education. It's non trivial. One of the leaders in this education space is Simon Fraser University and the Lorenet project. In their own relatively cooperative and controlled space, Lorenet developed the eduSource Communication Layer (ECL) of which two of our employees were contributors while at SFU. It's not a plug-and-play system although that was the intent of the project originally. Adding a new university to the system as an equal partner requires all participants getting involved. That's not a scalable solution for the Web.

So although, everyone may want a plug-and-play solution now, Scoble is correct, it ain't coming anytime soon. The Data Portability Group has the right approach. Address the smaller and contained problems that moves the initiative forward. Solving the single sign on issue alone is valuable. Even if OpenID, as is, is not a solution to single sign-on and attribution exchange across the Web, it does facilitate various federated systems working together more like a suite, which is an important step, maybe even a leap. Getting some of our favourite Web applications working closer together (like an Office Suite) would be great and that CAN and likely will come this year.

Now if only that was everyone's expectation.