The latest from Europe is that the Norwegian Standards Council is recommending mandatory use of ODF and PDF in all goverment agencies and services. The Minister of Renewal, Heidi Grande Roys identifies the importance of Open Standards and how crucial a role it plays within governments:
"the importance of open standards as a means of serving the
public in a better way. Open standards are also important for improving
collaboration between government entities. Public enterprises will
benefit from greater independence from vendors and achieve better use
of resources. To the industry, open standards will open up new business
opportunities and increased competition in public tenders."
This recommendation will be submitted to a public hearing with opinions given before August 20th 2007. In Malaysia, as required by the standardisation process also had a Public Comments period between August-October 2006. It can be predicted that there would be overwhelming support for this recommendation by many vendors of diverse (and competing) interests, support from user consortia and even individuals and private companies. However we can also safely assume that one vendor, its business partners and lobby groups would oppose this proposal with "interesting" objections. These objections are addressed in this site.
Unlike Malaysia, however Norway has the advantage of a Minister driving this forward looking bill, and we hope that Nations worldwide will join the growing Governments (like France, Belgium, Italy, Brazil) who recognise the utility of Open Standards such as ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) and PDF (ISO 19005-1) which ensures their citizens ready access to their documents now and the future.
yk.
Oslo, May 11, 2007 - Today, Norway's Minister of Renewal
Heidi Grande Røys (Socialist Party) presented the recommendations given
by the Norwegian Standards Council (Standardiseringsrådet), a body of
experts set up to the Cabinet on which document standards public
services are obliged to adhere to.
The Council recommends that ODF and PDF are adopted as
mandatory document standards to be used by all government agencies and
services. Other formats may be used however, as long as documents with
the same content are available at the same time in ODF or PDF.
In remarking that Microsoft is promoting MSOOXML as a better
format to serve their propriety binary formats, the Council states that
Norway in its international standardization work ought to promote the
convergence of the ODF and MSOOXML, in order to avoid having two
standards covering the same usage.
At today's press conference, Minister Grande Røys stressed
the importance of open standards as a means of serving the public in a
better way. Open standards are also important for improving
collaboration between government entities. Public enterprises will
benefit from greater independence from vendors and achieve better use
of resources. To the industry, open standards will open up new business
opportunities and increased competition in public tenders, the Minister
said.
According to the Minister, the Council's recommendations
will be submitted to a public hearing, with opinions to be given before
August 20, 2007. The Cabinet will then make a binding decision on the
Norwegian Government's document standards.
Follows:
Statement by Standards Council of Norway dated 14 March
2007, presented by Minister Heidi Grande Røys at a press conference of
11 May 2007.
"Proposal for a mandatory standard
The proposal deals with publishing public documents for
presentation on Web sites. PDF 1.4 or newer or PDF/A - ISO 19005-1 are
used for finished documents. ODF, ISO/IEC 26300 is used for documents
that are still being worked on.
Alternatively, it will still be possible to present the documents as pure HTML or XHTML Web sites, if appropriate.
The standard must be mandatory, so that users are given
access to public information, regardless of the software or software
platform each person decides to use. The standard complies with the
requirements in eNorway 2009 and Report to the Storting no. 17 2006-07
(the ICT Report) about equal treatment and inclusion of all
inhabitants, in that they must not be forced to use expensive software.
The information can be published in other formats in
addition, as long as they are also published in one of the mandatory
formats."
[...]
"An open standard is characterized by it being reputable and
by its maintenance by a noncommercial organization, and by the ongoing
development work being based on decision-making processes that are open
to all interested parties. The standard is published and the
documentation is available, either free of cost or for a negligible
fee. It must be possible for everyone to copy, distribute and use the
standard free of cost or for a negligible fee. The intellectual rights
linked to the standard (e.g. patents) are irrevocably available,
without any royalties attached. There are no reservations regarding
reuse of the standard."
[...]
"Microsoft, as a major market actor, promotes MSOOXML, which
is a better format for preserving semantics and special formats from
Microsoft's proprietary binary formats.
Standards Norway is aware of the work of making MSOOXML an
ISO/IEC standard, and proposes that this process be followed closely.
Norway should work in an international standards body to contribute to
ODF and MSOOXML converging into a common standard, so that we avoid
having two standards that basically cover the same area of use."
Promoting ODF (OpenDocument Format),
The latest from Europe is that the Norwegian Standards Council is recommending mandatory use of ODF and PDF in all goverment agencies and services. The Minister of Renewal, Heidi Grande Roys identifies the importance of Open Standards and how crucial a role it plays within governments:
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