Open Standards NZ Co-signers

The undersigned have all agreed that the New Zealand government should create a level playing field for software by mandating that all software procurement, particularly of commercial-off-the-shelf software, only considers software complying with open standards that are vendor-neutral, royalty-free and unencumbered by patents.

Where no relevant open standard exists, the government should undertake to develop suitable open standards, building on those already available elsewhere.

The goal is for software suppliers to the NZ government to compete to meet government-specified open standards rather than competing to set their own proprietary standard as is currently common practise.

# Name Organisation Comment Submitted
81 Olumuyiwa Taiwo Logic Expertise It's unfortunate that in 2016 governments still need to be educated on the benefits of open standards. An indirect consequence of governments mandating open standards is that the general citizenry, and small businesses in particular, will eventually start doing the same. The result will be a broadening of the base from which business are able select IT solutions and a lowering in business costs. 18 Nov 2016 00:07
82 Pikiora Wylie 16 Aug 2015 21:05
83 Quentin Pidduck Technologywise Ltd The availability and community behind open source projects can mean that at the end of the day it's a wiser solution than proprietary software anyway. 27 Jul 2015 20:14
84 Reed Wade 22 Jul 2015 23:32
85 Richard Dougherty 25 Jul 2015 23:05
86 Richard Hector 23 Jul 2015 11:06
87 Richard Law 4 Aug 2016 17:32
88 Richard McMillan 22 Mar 2017 09:38
89 Rob Elshire The Elshire Group Limited In addition to the many reasons for open standards presented here, as a genomics researcher, open standards will allow us access and connect data sets over time. Proprietary standards will not. In this way, open standards promote the generation and diffusion of knowledge and drive innovation. 8 Aug 2016 14:33
90 Rob Pearson IT manager of company with over 700 staff NZ government (and District Health Boards) are behaving anti-competitively, have a strong history of being closed to open computing standards, please stop being an embarrassing laggard in this regard, here are just 2 examples and both are easily fixed: -NZ uses standards for '2' editable document file formats, 'both' controlled by the same single vendor, a better and single file format has existed for a decade now. The UK government sorted this one out https://www.gov.uk/guidance/open-document-format-odf-guidance-for-uk-government. -Mandating that business partners use Microsoft Internet Explorer to work within their contracts, this is outrageous in 2015. 27 Sep 2015 12:40
91 Robert Collins In ICT the ability to use Free/Libre/Open source is a big competitive edge, as demonstrated by many web companies revolutionising the world today. For NZ to reap those benefits, it is essential that suppliers are able to compete on a level playing field rather than being forced to work with private "standards" which are designed to advantage their owner, rather than being a commons. Case studies that come to mind: - the UK experience - The Australian tax office submission headaches - Cost if e.g. voter registration forms were microsoft office templates 3 Mar 2016 10:35
92 Robert Fromont 15 Aug 2016 04:58
93 Robert Hunt Sole trader 29 Jul 2015 15:03
94 Robin de Haan The New Zealand Government should commit to open standards and not be prepared to trade them away. 31 Jul 2015 21:40
95 Roderick Francis David Aldridge As a user of the Linux operating system I have had problems communicating with some government electronic services. I have had to resort to mail. 23 Jul 2015 17:46
96 Roger Wayne Willcocks L-space Design Limited 3 Aug 2016 14:55
97 Sam Bonner 22 Jul 2015 16:45
98 Sam Bristow 17 Jan 2018 11:25
99 Shaun McGirr Need success stories to capture attention of policy makers: agency A adopted a certain open standard and look at the good it did! 9 Dec 2015 09:52
100 Stephen Harlow 28 Feb 2017 11:22
101 Steven Ellis In order for any Govt to maintain or reduce their IT costs it is critical that Open Standards are adopted or you continue to be locked into expensive proprietary approaches that carry a high end of life cost. 21 Nov 2016 13:08
102 Tabitha Roder 22 Jul 2015 20:09
103 Terry Woods 22 Jul 2015 16:45
104 Tony Bray Personal The whole of the NZ government should mandate open standards in all software and digital media. This should include Education, Health, Employment, Law, et al. 25 Jul 2015 11:33
105 Tony Dale University of Canterbury 30 Jul 2015 11:16
106 Traveler Hauptman MechAdept Limited Between the software we use with proprietary formats and those with open formats, we greatly prefer those with open formats. When working with a customer using open formats, we can often find suitable free software to work with the format. This is important for reducing operating costs with one-off projects. For open formats that we use often, we have the option of purchasing software with the set of features that suits our needs best. 22 Jul 2015 11:36
107 Wayne Mackintosh Personal supporter Great initiative! 22 Jul 2015 13:05
108 William Gordon Horizons Regional Council For the sake of Digital Continuity, open standards must become the standard for government information. 28 Jul 2015 11:40
109 Yuri de Groot 22 Jul 2015 21:41