Microsoft Lobbying In Singapore

Side Note: The Last Lap post containing OOXML results can be viewed here.

The ISO standards development process insist on the principle of consensus, industry satisfaction and voluntary adoption. Consensus is defined as:

"The views of all interests are taken into account: manufacturers, vendors and users, consumer groups, testing laboratories, governments, engineering professions and research organizations."

Microsoft has been strongly lobbying members of National Bodies to vote "Approve" on OOXML (DIS 29500) without due recognition and consideration of the technical issues that needed to be discussed and fixed in OOXML. Never mind that there is a substantial oppostion to the introduction of this draft standard (as it stands today), Microsoft has been spending countless millions of dollars and the time of many of its employees to lobby and get OOXML through the venerable gates of ISO by hook or crook.

Microsoft Singapore (led by Mr. Barney Lau) has been running an intensive lobbying campaign to the members of the Information Technology Standards Committee (ITSC) to vote "Approve" on OOXML and disregard the "Disapprove" recommendation of Singapore's Information Exchange Technical Committee. Sure enough, in September 2007, ITSC voted "Approve" despite its technical committee voting a strong "Disapprove". The members of ITSC include members of the academia and industry as follows:

1. Chairman, Mr Robert Chew representing the Standards Council
2. Mr V S Kumar representing the Association of the Small and Medium Enterprises
3. Mr Raymond Lee representing the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
4. Mr Alvin Ong representing the Information Technology Management Association
5. Dr Susanto Rahardja representing the Institute for Infocomm Research
6. Dr Derek Kiong representing the Institute of Systems Science
7. Mr Tam Kok Yan representing the Ministry of Defence
8. Mr Daniel Wee representing Nanyang Polytechnic
9. Assoc Prof Chia Liang-Tien, Clement representing Nanyang Technological University
10. Assoc Prof Pung Hung Keng representing National University of Singapore
11. Mr Lim Sah Soon representing the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry
12. Mr Alphonsus Pang, Singapore Computer Society
13. Mr Foo Jong Tong representing Singapore infocomm Technology Federation
14. Ms Susan Chong representing SPRING Singapore
15. Mr Harish Pillay individual capacity
16. Mr Wilson Tan, individual capacity

Apparently, Microsoft Singapore allegedly promised funding and discounts to the academia. There is no documentation to back this up, so I cannot substantiate this rumour (and neither should you consider it to be true). However, it is true that Microsoft Singapore got all its business partners to write in standard template letters of support to ITSC to get ITSC vote "Approve".

In particular, the Information Technology Management Association (ITMA) and the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SITF) (highlighted in red above), specifically wrote in to ITSC supporting OOXML as an ISO standard. Amazingly, both letters were CC-ed to Mr. Barney Lau (Microsoft Singapore Managing Director). I honestly did not know that ITMA and SITF were answerable to Mr. Barney Lau of Microsoft Singapore. Oh wait, he is a member of the SITF council.

That may be the most cogent explanation yet of Singapore's "Approve" vote I've seen to date.

Here are the letters sent by ITMA and SITF (as provided by a source in Microsoft who was not happy with the approach the regional Microsoft office took to railroad OOXML through Singapore's standards body).

Click on the images to view them in full.

Both letters have the text:

Mr Robert Chew
Chairman
IT Standards Committee

Dear Robert,

I understand that the IT Standards Committee is reviewing the ISO/IEC DIS 29600 (sic) ballot on Ecma Open XML.

The [Association Name] is Singapore's premier [Industry] association. [Justify the Associations relevance to the IT economy]

[Association Abbreviation] is not in a position to assess the technical merits of Ecma Open XML. We leave this in the hands of technical experts in the IETC. In as far as ITSC can satisfy itself that having Ecma Open XML as an ISO/IEC Standard, [will drive efficiency, create new opportunities / does not give any one vendor commercial advantage over its competitors], [Association Abbreviation] would like to express our support for DIS 29600 (sic) to become an ISO standard.

Yours Sincerely,

xxx
[Association Name]

cc: Mr Barney Lau
    Managing Director
    Microsoft Singapore Pte Ltd

The problem with these sort of letters from members of the Singapore standards body is that they completely disregard the standards development process, which requires that the standards should be fit for use globally by all industries and customers and that the proposed standards should receive consensus and represent the interests of all parties concerned.

Zero focus is given on the noted technical deficiencies of the proposed standard and more stunningly, both ITMA and SITF refuse to participate on the discussion on the technical merits of OOXML. ITMA and SITF both coincidentally, couldn't even get the number of the ISO standard right (referring to it as ISO 29600 instead of ISO 29500, this may be a typo but come on, it takes some serious incompetence to screw up a template letter!).

If ITMA and SITF, as members of ITSC, are not willing to assess the technical commentary on OOXML and are allied to Microsoft, they should have recused themselves from voting instead of voting to "Approve" the standard.

Let's look at ISO's principle on industry participation:

"Global solutions to satisfy industries and customers worldwide."

In other words, ISO standards should be developed to satisfy industries and customers globally. Not Microsoft industries. Not Microsoft customers. But all industries and customers. Hence, if there is sustained opposition from a wide spectrum of users, multinational companies, local industries and free and open source software groups, something would be wrong if ISO adopts OOXML, innit?

Microsoft recognizes the validity of this line of argument, and attempts to skew perception of support by asking as many of its business partners to write in. We've seen the Microsoft machinery in action in Malaysia, and members of ITSC saw it first hand in Singapore as well. Microsoft business partners were giving template letters and asked to fill them in. The letters are word for word the same. It makes for incredible reading. In fact, the keen-eyed reader will notice that some of the letters have the template variables still present (look for [ADD NAME, TITLE, ASSOC.] e.g Alphasoft, CHASS, etc).

The Microsoft business partners are clearly giving support to Microsoft without bothering to understanding the technical issues at hand.

Is this how standards are developed at ISO? Is this true industry participation? Is this true consensus of all interested parties?

Here are some images I extracted (click on the images to view them full screen). You can also read the full 32-page PDF here. Again, these documents were provided by our source within Microsoft.

And the most hilarious letter of support comes from a Singaporean secondary girl's school, Crescent Girl's School. That's right folks, that's how desperate they were to get their "Approve" vote, they actually got a school to submit a letter of support:

Comments

[Roy Schestowitz]

Absolutely amazing! (yet hardly surprising)

The citizens of Malaysia, assuming they understand this, should be fuming.

Microsoft is earning itself no friends with such maneuvers.

[yoonkit]

Roy,

It should be citizens of Singapore who should be fuming. These form letters were addressed to ITSC, the standards committee for Singapore.

Regards,

yk.

[Roy Schestowitz]

yk,

I realised this a few minutes later. I guess I was blinded by the naked truth, so didn't pay attention to the *ahem* title.

Look at the bright side. The people who sent these letters were not dead (2001 incident, see LA Times) and no elephants were in the room.

[Alan]

I had expected to see more sordid details of this sad soap-opera, but this, along with the other stories we are hearing, are beyond the pale. Microsoft and ISO have a lot to answer for. I hope that an accounting will be required.

[Ditesh Gathani]

@Alan:

We at OpenMalaysiaBlog believe in transparency and openness. This was not an attempt to shoot down Microsoft (indeed, there are people within Microsoft who don't like the more ruthless actions some senior members of Microsoft are taking).

So, the intention is not to make it sordid, but to show the situation as it is (to our knowledge) and let readers make what they will of the situation.

Yes, I agree with you that ISO needs a major overhaul and there needs to be sustained effort within ISO in opening up so that less abuse happens.

[Alan]

@Ditesh:

Thanks - "sordid" is a bit strong. I very much appreciate the balanced tone and position this blog takes.

I am also thankful that there are many within Microsoft who do not appreciate the strong-arm tactics of some in the company.

[RobBrown]

I don't think this is all that significant. Lobbying is legal, and "astroturfing" like this, while distasteful, is also legal. Don't forget that IBM has been running these sorts of campaigns too!

There are plenty of *real* examples of process abuse going on in this OOXML mess, these letters are at the very minor end of the scale.

[John]

The problem is this is ISO process, where quality matters. With such lobbying, no matter how bad is the specification, it will get pass through.
Then why not disband ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 instead? It is there for a reason.You can't just ignore it because of lobbying. Are those people who lobby know about technical problems of the specification?

[Ditesh Gathani]

@Rob Brown:

It's not illegal, but it's unethical and it impedes in the standards development process. If you've ever sat on the committee on one of these National Bodies, you'll quickly see how such lobbying affects the course of normal constructive technical discussion.

Remember that despite the recommendation of Singapore's technical committee to vote "Disapprove", the ITSC still voted approve, in part, due to lobbying tactics such as this. Sure, such tactics fall on the minor scale of other irregularities we are seeing (and note that we never said any different), BUT it did affect Singapore's vote and that counts for something (especially when one considers that Singapore is a P-member).

The end-losers are you and me, and the third-party developers, and the users, and the ISV's, and the open source interoperability projects, and governments, and anybody who will have to use this standard. We could have all benefited from a more coherent standard but thanks to such lobbying, we all end up losing.

So, such "minor" lobbying does end up making the difference in the grand scheme of things.

My perspective is that we need to bring such lobbying tactics (from *all* parties) out in the open so that everybody can see clearly the damage wrought by the lobbying (no matter how minor it may seem to be). Only then will we can move forward and demand for transparency and openness from our standards bodies.

[cabtrix]

I am vaguely amused that letters have lots of errors in them – like the one from Alphasoft, with placeholders like "[ADD NAME, TITLE, ASSOC.]" visible.

Do you think it's deliberate on their part? =)

[yoonkit]

Lief Lodalh has reported that Norway also experienced these form letters submitted to their National Body.

The PDF is here:
http://people.opera.com/howcome/2007/ooxml/37-brev.pdf

and his post is here:
http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2008/04/disgusting-is-what-it-is.html

yk

[ex-MS]

Well well well, Barney Lau is leaving Microsoft Singapore. Wonder if this had anything to do with it. Good riddance I say!