Norwegian Standards Council supports ODF

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.

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The following is the translation of the Norwegian press release from consortiuminfo.org:

 

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."