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
1 Jeremy List
2 Jeffrey John Martin
3 Sasha Mrkailo Digital is a major part of public infrastructure. It should be treated like that.
4 Elizabeth Doughty
5 Adam Tansell-Murrow
6 Elizabeth Doughty
7 Rimu Atkinson
8 Christopher Dempsey
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.
10 John Sutcliffe
11 Lovepreet Singh
12 Michel Van Eeckhout Open standards are essential in any democracy.
13 Carl Geib
14 Sam Bristow
15 Loic Teixeira
16 Richard McMillan
17 Jonathan Garlick
18 Eion Robb
19 Stephen Harlow
20 Lachlan Wimsett
21 David Nind
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.
23 Monica Corbett Whattam
24 Brent Wood
25 Danny Adair
26 Robert Fromont
27 Richard Law
28 Michael Fincham
29 Evan Fraser
30 Fran Firman
31 Chris Linwood
32 Morgan Avery
33 Alan Falloon
34 Mike Cowie
35 Eion Robb
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
37 Blake Burgess
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!
39 Jim Cheetham
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.