How Can Quatro Plus Help Organisations Implement Machine-Readable Labelling?

Through the Quatro Plus project, a scalable infrastructure is in place, based on sound technical standards. A range of tools exist to help labelling authorities make their data available and for users to visualise that data, as well as comment on it and share it.

The steps any organisation needs to take to make their labels available as data will vary enormously depending on what systems are already in place. It is important to recognise immediately that publishing quality labels as data does not, or certainly does not need to, involve any re-engineering or re-configuring of the human and technical systems that will already be in place. It's an add-on, not a replacement for anything.

Neither is it necessary to use the Quatro vocabulary. Where a labelling authority's success criteria overlap with terms in the Quatro vocabulary, the latter provides a ready-made system. However, each labelling authority will, of course, have its own areas of expertise, brand values and distinctiveness that are fully preserved and respected.

Having noted those points we can set out the end point of the process and organisations can assess how much effort will be required to reach it from their existing positions.

Vocabulary

The criteria already used by the labelling authority should be available as a list of check points or brief statements such as 'Has an identifiable point of contact', 'has appropriate expertise and qualifications'.
Where these overlap with the Quatro Vocabulary, the latter should be used. This promotes interoperability so that a user unaware of your particular scheme can see benefit from your label. Furthermore, it helps automated compliance monitoring.

The specific vocabulary terms need to be encoded as an RDF vocabulary and published at a stable location on the web (see this note from Tim Berners-Lee on Cool URIs).

Create Labels

Quality labels can be created in a number of ways. Quatro plus provides two tools that do this: The Label Management Environment is a tool for use by subject experts whereas the QSN (Quality Social Network) is a tool for end users to create, rate and share labels. [More detailed information on these tools is available in the Services and Tools section]. As alternatives to these tools, a simple web-based form can be used to create labels, for example, see i-sieve Technologies' mobileOK POWDER generator. Finally, there may be no need to create the quality labels at all as they may be generated directly from a database – see next section.

Publish Labels

Quality labels can be published simply as standalone POWDER documents and this will suit some labelling authorities. Often however, such organisations will already have some sort of database. This can be anything from a highly optimised, multiple-redundancy, high capacity system… to a spreadsheet. Typically, however, it's something like a MySQL database that is accessed via a Web-based API. What's required is a Web API that returns a POWDER document in response to a query. For example, it might be able to accept queries such as:

"http://acme.example.org/db?u= http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2F&format=powder"

and return a POWDER document that included description resources (quality labels) for the example.com domain. Again for emphasis, if your organisation already has an API for the database, this is simply a new API for the existing system, and certainly not a wholesale re-engineering task!

Provide the Authentication Route

Where quality labels are published directly by the labelling authority, the location of the label on the web (i.e. on the labelling authority's own servers) may be sufficient assurance of authenticity, especially if served using HTTPS. If labels are distributed however, i.e. there is no single point of reference, then the labelling authority needs to provide an authentication route. There are various ways of achieving this but the one used by the Quatro proxy is a SOAP-based system. Web Services are easy to set up using SOAP and, again, can usually be added to existing database infrastructure with little difficulty.

End User Tools and Promotion

Quatro Plus provides a variety of tools through which end users may visualise quality labels and these are freely available. It's worth noting however that the Quatro Plus infrastructure is based on open APIs and Web Services so that new tools can be developed or existing ones extended to make use of the data for the benefit of their users.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

As already noted, the precise cost of implementing machine-readable quality labels, whether done using the Quatro Plus infrastructure or not, is highly dependent on a particular organisation's starting point. For many existing trustmark operators the necessary additions to their own infrastructure will be modest.

Developing new consumer tools is always expensive but extending existing tools can, again, be a modest task and provide a new feature, perhaps as part of a regular maintenance and upgrade process.

As to the benefits of making quality labels machine readable, there are many including:

• a modern distribution system that contributes to the linked data cloud;
• greater discoverability;
• significant reduction in spoofing opportunities;
• interoperability with other quality labels without diluting or affecting your own brand;
• ease of implementation by labelled website owners;
• synergy between your brand and others, helping to make best use of your promotional activity.

All of which adds up to an increased value for your service.