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
1 Jeremy List 3 May 2025 17:31
2 Jeffrey John Martin 26 Mar 2025 17:25
3 Sasha Mrkailo Digital is a major part of public infrastructure. It should be treated like that. 14 Mar 2023 09:36
4 Elizabeth Doughty 2 Feb 2023 00:39
5 Adam Tansell-Murrow 5 Jan 2023 12:37
6 Elizabeth Doughty 17 Dec 2022 11:01
7 Rimu Atkinson 9 Nov 2022 10:10
8 Christopher Dempsey 2 Nov 2022 19:59
9 Russell McNaughton Not only does this make sense economically, but surely also from a sustainability and ecological point of view. In terms of public transport it must be beneficial and more environmentally friendly to not have to throw away all the existing hardware in order to change to a new software solution. 22 Oct 2022 01:39
10 John Sutcliffe 8 Aug 2022 19:29
11 Lovepreet Singh 7 Sep 2020 12:14
12 Michel Van Eeckhout Open standards are essential in any democracy. 25 Jul 2020 06:50
13 Carl Geib 16 Jun 2020 13:41
14 Sam Bristow 17 Jan 2018 11:25
15 Loic Teixeira 22 Mar 2017 11:03
16 Richard McMillan 22 Mar 2017 09:38
17 Jonathan Garlick 22 Mar 2017 09:14
18 Eion Robb 8 Mar 2017 21:07
19 Stephen Harlow 28 Feb 2017 11:22
20 Lachlan Wimsett 11 Dec 2016 18:17
21 David Nind 21 Nov 2016 22:24
22 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
23 Monica Corbett Whattam 11 Nov 2016 18:06
24 Brent Wood 9 Nov 2016 11:54
25 Danny Adair 2 Nov 2016 15:26
26 Robert Fromont 15 Aug 2016 04:58
27 Richard Law 4 Aug 2016 17:32
28 Michael Fincham 3 Aug 2016 13:47
29 Evan Fraser 3 Aug 2016 12:40
30 Fran Firman 14 Jul 2016 09:49
31 Chris Linwood 11 Jul 2016 15:18
32 Morgan Avery 23 Jun 2016 13:58
33 Alan Falloon 9 Jun 2016 16:55
34 Mike Cowie 8 Jun 2016 20:44
35 Eion Robb 8 Jun 2016 20:43
36 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
37 Blake Burgess 2 Mar 2016 19:53
38 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
39 Jim Cheetham 16 Nov 2015 09:03
40 Donald Johnston I have experienced problems in the past with my children's school requiring assignments to be submitted in Microsoft Office format which is a non-standard format. Parents should not have any need to purchase proprietary office software when there is very good free alternative software (e.g. Libre Office) which is completely standards compliant. 15 Nov 2015 22:03