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 Monica Corbett Whattam
82 Brent Wood
83 Danny Adair
84 Robert Fromont
85 Richard Law
86 Michael Fincham
87 Evan Fraser
88 Fran Firman
89 Chris Linwood
90 Morgan Avery
91 Alan Falloon
92 Mike Cowie
93 Eion Robb
94 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
95 Blake Burgess
96 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!
97 Jim Cheetham
98 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.
99 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.
100 Pikiora Wylie
101 Imogen Grace
102 Elena Kondrateva
103 David Stewart
104 Robin de Haan The New Zealand Government should commit to open standards and not be prepared to trade them away.
105 Abhishek Reddy
106 Jan Larres
107 Adrian Croucher
108 donald callum robertson
109 Nigel Bovey
110 Richard Dougherty
111 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.
112 Richard Hector
113 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!
114 Francois Marier
115 Reed Wade
116 Yuri de Groot
117 Tabitha Roder
118 Dave Horn
119 Terry Woods
120 Sam Bonner