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 Fraser
2 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/
3 Jeremy List
4 Jeffrey John Martin
5 Sasha Mrkailo Digital is a major part of public infrastructure. It should be treated like that.
6 Elizabeth Doughty
7 Adam Tansell-Murrow
8 Elizabeth Doughty
9 Rimu Atkinson
10 Christopher Dempsey
11 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.
12 John Sutcliffe
13 Lovepreet Singh
14 Michel Van Eeckhout Open standards are essential in any democracy.
15 Carl Geib
16 Sam Bristow
17 Loic Teixeira
18 Richard McMillan
19 Jonathan Garlick
20 Eion Robb
21 Stephen Harlow
22 Lachlan Wimsett
23 David Nind
24 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.
25 Monica Corbett Whattam
26 Brent Wood
27 Danny Adair
28 Robert Fromont
29 Richard Law
30 Michael Fincham
31 Evan Fraser
32 Fran Firman
33 Chris Linwood
34 Morgan Avery
35 Alan Falloon
36 Mike Cowie
37 Eion Robb
38 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
39 Blake Burgess
40 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!