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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 41 | Mike Cowie | 8 Jun 2016 20:44 | ||
| 42 | Michelle Beavan | Exess Connectivity Ltd | 15 Aug 2016 08:27 | |
| 43 | Michel Van Eeckhout | Open standards are essential in any democracy. | 25 Jul 2020 06:50 | |
| 44 | Michael Fincham | 3 Aug 2016 13:47 | ||
| 45 | Michael Fielding | NZQA publishes information on which qualifications contribute to University Entrance, in Excel format. It's an outrage! https://www2.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/understanding-secondary-quals/university-entrance/literacy-for-ue/ | 15 Jul 2026 20:40 | |
| 46 | Michael Doerner | TechnologyWise Ltd | Non-open (proprietary) file formats lead to lock-in vendor dependencies which have been happening all around Microsoft's file formats and application dependencies. European countries are reducing these dependencies for many reasons: "German state ditches Microsoft for open-source software": https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/german-state-ditches-microsoft-for-open-source-software/K5YACGI56VHYVM3SDNPCQNSG7A/ "Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux": https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-denmark-is-dumping-microsoft-office-and-windows-for-libreoffice-and-linux/ "One of France's largest cities has now also ditched Microsoft for open source software": https://share.google/Ly8upTVhlS5f94AwA "Digital sovereignty - a trend in Europe, sparked by Microsoft": https://tuta.com/blog/digital-sovereignty-europe New Zealand as a nation and NZ businesses should aim to minimise those dependencies too. | 12 Sep 2025 08:59 |
| 47 | Megan Williams | PwC Digital | I agree that Open Standards would allow NZ digital companies to compete for software development contracts. That NZ tax payers money returns value to NZ, the IT dollar is invested back in NZ which is good for innovation, growing NZ IT & digital capability, and in turn economic development. | 29 Aug 2016 22:37 |
| 48 | Martin Hohman-Marriott | United Scientists CORE Limited | open standards are crucial for: - collaboration - future-proof technologies - resource conservation | 7 Jan 2022 18:45 |
| 49 | Mark Harris | Independent consultant | Any organisation, public or private, should be moving to open standards for information retention and reuse, for accessibility and for security. Open standards enable access to historical information (can you still read the WordPerfect documents you wrote in 1989?) as well as the documents of the future. The world is moving towards interoperability - you can't do that when you're bound to a particular vendor who doesn't play well with others and will, by default, use their own, proprietary format. It doesn't matter which vendor you are thinking of, or what type of software or data, there are open alternatives that you should be using to enable sharing or your and other organisation's information. | 31 Jul 2015 23:33 |
| 50 | Mark Foster | Jazzed Solutions Ltd | The use of open standards that are universally accepted and able to be viewed both cross-platform and cross-generation should be an obvious move for Government. | 29 Jan 2016 17:10 |
| 51 | Lovepreet Singh | 7 Sep 2020 12:14 | ||
| 52 | Loic Teixeira | 22 Mar 2017 11:03 | ||
| 53 | Lachlan Wimsett | 11 Dec 2016 18:17 | ||
| 54 | Konstantin Pastbin | personal | 29 Jul 2015 21:10 | |
| 55 | Jonathan Garlick | 22 Mar 2017 09:14 | ||
| 56 | John Sutcliffe | 8 Aug 2022 19:29 | ||
| 57 | John Butt | TrueNet | Not just Microsoft, it would be good to get Apple to use opensource for it's office files also. | 2 Aug 2016 21:13 |
| 58 | Jim Cheetham | 16 Nov 2015 09:03 | ||
| 59 | Jeremy List | 3 May 2025 17:31 | ||
| 60 | Jeffrey John Martin | 26 Mar 2025 17:25 | ||
| 61 | Jeff Crawford | Northern Network Services | 22 Jul 2015 12:06 | |
| 62 | Jan Larres | 29 Jul 2015 08:51 | ||
| 63 | James Nisbet | Bandit Design | 8 Nov 2016 10:31 | |
| 64 | Imogen Grace | 10 Aug 2015 12:21 | ||
| 65 | Hugh Gordon Cooper | Retired State Servant | 24 Jul 2015 16:32 | |
| 66 | Hilary Oliver | 22 Jul 2015 11:11 | ||
| 67 | Harry Chapman | Open standards are the way to ensure all citizens of New Zealand are able to open the files that the Government creates. We can do better! | 23 Jul 2015 07:58 | |
| 68 | Hadley Rich | nice technology | 23 Jul 2015 08:08 | |
| 69 | Guy Kloss | Mega Limited | 8 Sep 2015 14:49 | |
| 70 | Greg Hewgill | sole trader | 22 Jul 2015 11:08 | |
| 71 | Grant Paton-Simpson | PSAL | Open standards = competition = superior results | 17 Nov 2016 19:30 |
| 72 | Grant Paton-Simpson | Paton-Simpson & Associates Ltd | Requiring open standards is good for the purchasers of software such as government. It also levels the playing field so that New Zealand companies can fairly compete with international software companies. Single-word answer for why we should be following open standards? Flash! | 24 Jul 2015 07:23 |
| 73 | Glenn Ramsey | Componic Ltd | 16 Nov 2015 08:57 | |
| 74 | Glenn Ramsey | Componic Ltd | 22 Jul 2015 11:01 | |
| 75 | Gabriella Turek | self | 23 Jul 2015 17:48 | |
| 76 | Fraser | 26 Jul 2026 16:03 | ||
| 77 | Francois Marier | 22 Jul 2015 23:54 | ||
| 78 | Fran Firman | 14 Jul 2016 09:49 | ||
| 79 | Evan Fraser | 3 Aug 2016 12:40 | ||
| 80 | Elizabeth Doughty | 2 Feb 2023 00:39 |