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
81 Brent Wood
82 Danny Adair
83 Robert Fromont
84 Richard Law
85 Michael Fincham
86 Evan Fraser
87 Fran Firman
88 Chris Linwood
89 Morgan Avery
90 Alan Falloon
91 Mike Cowie
92 Eion Robb
93 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
94 Blake Burgess
95 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!
96 Jim Cheetham
97 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.
98 Nicholas Phillips Alternatively, as a very minimum, include cost of migrating data away from any tendered solution in the assessed cost of implementation of that solution.
99 Pikiora Wylie
100 Imogen Grace
101 Elena Kondrateva
102 David Stewart
103 Robin de Haan The New Zealand Government should commit to open standards and not be prepared to trade them away.
104 Abhishek Reddy
105 Jan Larres
106 Adrian Croucher
107 donald callum robertson
108 Nigel Bovey
109 Richard Dougherty
110 Roderick Francis David Aldridge As a user of the Linux operating system I have had problems communicating with some government electronic services. I have had to resort to mail.
111 Richard Hector
112 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!
113 Francois Marier
114 Reed Wade
115 Yuri de Groot
116 Tabitha Roder
117 Dave Horn
118 Terry Woods
119 Sam Bonner
120 Eliot Blennerhassett this is long overdue