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 Byron Cochrane Land Information New Zealand The promotion of open standards is fundamental to my work in promoting a national Spatial Data Infrastructure. To better and more efficiently leverage resources that already exist, encourage the creation of needed data that does not, and to provide a platform that increases the value and reliability of these data and the systems supporting their access, open standards are prerequisite. 29 Jul 2015 14:36
82 Don Johnston Learn Rapidly Ltd Because of the use of Microsoft Office in schools, parents are almost forced to purchase it to enable their children to do their homework on home computers. This would be totally unnecessary if schools were required to adopt open standards. 5 Nov 2016 14:33
83 Donald Johnston Learn Rapidly Ltd I don't want to be forced to use proprietary software when there is excellent alternative open source software available. 22 Jul 2015 12:55
84 Alexander Charles King Linuxworks Limited Open standards hold the potential to increase the productivity and accessibility of business and government. If universally adopted, we could create a step change in productivity. 22 Jul 2015 11:04
85 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
86 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
87 Guy Kloss Mega Limited 8 Sep 2015 14:49
88 Hadley Rich nice technology 23 Jul 2015 08:08
89 Brent Wood NIWA; NZOSS See: https://teamwork.niwa.co.nz/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=26575332 https://teamwork.niwa.co.nz/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=27983920 https://teamwork.niwa.co.nz/display/NZEIIF/New+Zealand+Environmental+Information+Interoperability+Framework - https://teamwork.niwa.co.nz/display/NZBSS/BSS+implementation+work+stream?preview=%2F35848234%2F44302667%2FBSS-implementation-report-final.pdf 27 Jun 2016 07:54
90 Jeff Crawford Northern Network Services 22 Jul 2015 12:06
91 Dave Lane NZ Open Source Society We at the NZ Open Source Society think that a level playing field for software is crucial for achieving an equitable society in the Internet Age. With more and more government services and compliance requirements moving to online systems, it has never been more important to ensure that we don't hand control of our national systems to overseas corporate interests. This is unfortunately currently the case, and we think it needs to change. We trust that the NZ government will see the common sense and free-market appeal of this initiative, and recognise that it will both reduce costs and increase social equity by reducing barriers to online participation by both the private sector and the citizens of NZ. 22 Jul 2015 10:40
92 Adrian Cochrane OpenWork Ltd I value free market competition, and this is how you get it in the software space. 19 Mar 2019 13:11
93 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
94 Konstantin Pastbin personal 29 Jul 2015 21:10
95 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
96 Wayne Mackintosh Personal supporter Great initiative! 22 Jul 2015 13:05
97 Ben McKenzie Presbyterian Support Otago 25 Jul 2015 10:19
98 Grant Paton-Simpson PSAL Open standards = competition = superior results 17 Nov 2016 19:30
99 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
100 Hugh Gordon Cooper Retired State Servant 24 Jul 2015 16:32
101 Gabriella Turek self 23 Jul 2015 17:48
102 Robert Hunt Sole trader 29 Jul 2015 15:03
103 Dom Tupu Sole Trader 24 Jul 2015 16:43
104 David Crosswell sole trader When open source software supplies the needs of governments that dwarf that of New Zealand, with the reliability, stability, and security required by such entities as the International Space Station, along with the New York and London stock exchanges, there's no valid rationale for the New Zealand government to spend money on an inferior standard. As far as open standards are concerned, government should be facilitating communication, not stifling it. 22 Jul 2015 20:59
105 David Love sole trader 22 Jul 2015 20:31
106 Amie Holman Sole trader I work in the government, I have to use propietry software all of tyhe time, close platforms and non exsistant intergrations. Not only do we continuiosly send .docx files to everyone, we are stuck in an environment where any efforts to be as open source as possible are stiffled and discouraged. this makes me the ranty werid person in the office who often ends emails like the following "As you might notice the document is in .odt format (open licence format which means it’s legal for you to open the document in programs other than Microsoft word) this will mean if you want to track changes you will need to save as .docx (the licence that means I can only open the document legally in Microsoft word. This perpetuities the propriety software monopoly, which stifles freedoms and innovation, and goes against the ethos of open government partnership. I feel like this is a thing we might need to look at in the future)" 23 Jul 2015 17:00
107 Greg Hewgill sole trader 22 Jul 2015 11:08
108 Nathan Brown Springload 22 Mar 2017 09:18
109 Neil Harsant SysLinx - Sole Trader Proprietary data standards come with no guarantee of long term support. Internationally agreed standards to come with such assurance. Government's information is ultimately the property of it's citizens and commercial organizations should not be in a position to hold that information hostage. 22 Jul 2015 18:29
110 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
111 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
112 Andrew Mason The Knowledge Group Ltd. 23 Nov 2016 09:58
113 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
114 Martin Hohman-Marriott United Scientists CORE Limited open standards are crucial for: - collaboration - future-proof technologies - resource conservation 7 Jan 2022 18:45
115 David Thompson University of Canterbury 5 Sep 2015 16:27
116 Tony Dale University of Canterbury 30 Jul 2015 11:16
117 David J. Pearce Victoria University of Wellington 22 Jul 2015 10:56
118 Rasheed A Waikato Islamic School We use Firefox and LibreOffice on all PCs in our computer lab. Our students do not miss any feature in MS Office :) 24 Apr 2021 07:29
119 Brady Dyer Web Boutique Heard you talk at ITx2016 11 Jul 2016 14:58