Edustandaard

Challenge

Dutch education is one of the most fragmented public domains: primary education, secondary education, vocational education (mbo), universities of applied sciences (hbo), and research universities (wo) each have their own legislation, systems, sector organisations, and vendors. On top of that, national parties (DUO, Kennisnet, SURF, sector councils) collaborate with a large market of commercial software vendors. Edustandaard is the platform where sector and government jointly establish standards and governance frameworks. The dual challenge: on one hand, sharpening the standardisation process itself so that proposals reach the Standardisation Council efficiently and with proper substantiation; on the other, ensuring a thorough substantive assessment of individual standards, including the two key standards Edu-V Afsprakenstelsel and Open Education API (OEAPI).

What I do

As senior standardisation advisor, I have been working on two parallel tracks since 2024.

Improving the standardisation process. How do proposals move from working group to Standardisation Council? Where does ambiguity exist around roles, criteria, or decision points? The work consists of sharpening agenda setting, assessment criteria, and positioning agreements, and of fostering supported decisions between public and private parties. The guiding framework is BOMOS, the Dutch framework for open standards governance: an explicit, auditable approach rather than implicit agreements among insiders.

Assessment of the Edu-V Afsprakenstelsel. Edu-V is a cross-sector governance framework that bundles legal, organisational, functional, and technical agreements for data exchange between learning and teaching resources in primary, (special) secondary, secondary, and vocational education. The assessment examines substantive coherence, alignment with ROSA and national frameworks, and whether the framework is robust enough to be supported by vendors.

Assessment of the Open Education API (OEAPI). The OEAPI defines a data model and REST API for educational logistics information (students, programmes, courses, assessments, rooms, timetables). The assessment tests the data model for internal consistency, alignment with MIM and generic government frameworks, and the impact on existing implementations in hbo and wo.

Key design decisions

• Process and substance in tandem. A sharper process without substantive assessment produces paper governance; a substantive assessment without a process framework gets lost in ad hoc advice. Both tracks reinforce each other only when pursued simultaneously.
• Think cross-sector, deliver sector-specific. Concepts such as “student”, “programme”, and “assessment” differ subtly between primary, secondary, vocational, and higher education. Standards must make explicit what is shared and what is not, without erasing sector-specific identity.
• Align with the generic government infrastructure. Education is not an island: ROSA, MIM, NORA, DCAT-AP, and other government-wide frameworks are the reference point that education standards must relate to, not a parallel universe.

Results and adoption

The work contributes to the further development of the standardisation process within Edustandaard and to the substantive foundation on which the Edu-V Afsprakenstelsel and the Open Education API can be assessed and positioned by the Standardisation Council. The experience connects to the broader E-Space work on integral information models and to the Forum Standaardisatie track, where comparable trade-offs are made for government as a whole.