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
1 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
2 Mike Riversdale Access Granted NZ 26 Jan 2019 12:42
3 BZ Trimm LLC Aw, this was an exceptionally nice post. Taking a few minutes and actual effort to produce a good article… but what can I say… I hesitate a whole lot and never manage to get anything done. 31 Oct 2018 09:23
4 Sam Bristow 17 Jan 2018 11:25
5 LK I blog often and I truly thank you for your content. This great article has really peaked my interest. I'm going to book mark your site and keep checking for new details about once per week. I opted in for your RSS feed too. 22 Apr 2017 09:03
6 Loic Teixeira 22 Mar 2017 11:03
7 Richard McMillan 22 Mar 2017 09:38
8 Nathan Brown Springload 22 Mar 2017 09:18
9 Jonathan Garlick 22 Mar 2017 09:14
10 Eion Robb 8 Mar 2017 21:07
11 EM Thanks for finally writing about >Support Mandatory Open Standards | Open Standards NZ <Liked it! 5 Mar 2017 03:20
12 Stephen Harlow 28 Feb 2017 11:22
13 Lachlan Wimsett 11 Dec 2016 18:17
14 Andrew Mason The Knowledge Group Ltd. 23 Nov 2016 09:58
15 David Nind 21 Nov 2016 22:24
16 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. 21 Nov 2016 13:08
17 Don Christie Catalyst IT 18 Nov 2016 13:09
18 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
19 Colin Jackson Jackson Strategy Government spends a truly vast amount on IT. It is the biggest purchaser of IT in New Zealand. Yet, despite IT being NZ's second largest export, most of that spend goes to overseas companies due to lock-in practices by multinationals. Come on, NZ government, this isn't hard, just solve it the way other countries do, by requiring open standards so that all IT companies can compete. 17 Nov 2016 22:40
20 Grant Paton-Simpson PSAL Open standards = competition = superior results 17 Nov 2016 19:30
21 Monica Corbett Whattam 11 Nov 2016 18:06
22 Brent Wood 9 Nov 2016 11:54
23 James Nisbet Bandit Design 8 Nov 2016 10:31
24 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
25 Danny Adair 2 Nov 2016 15:26
26 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
27 Michelle Beavan Exess Connectivity Ltd 15 Aug 2016 08:27
28 Robert Fromont 15 Aug 2016 04:58
29 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
30 Richard Law 4 Aug 2016 17:32
31 Roger Wayne Willcocks L-space Design Limited 3 Aug 2016 14:55
32 Michael Fincham 3 Aug 2016 13:47
33 Evan Fraser 3 Aug 2016 12:40
34 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
35 Daniel Reurich Centurion Computer Technology (2005) Ltd Until we have mandatory vendor neutral open standards for government, there will always be additional impediments to interactions with the government. It's time things were rebalanced and vendors brought to heel, so that everybody can participate regardless of the technology they have access too. 26 Jul 2016 11:47
36 Fran Firman 14 Jul 2016 09:49
37 Chris Linwood 11 Jul 2016 15:18
38 Brady Dyer Web Boutique Heard you talk at ITx2016 11 Jul 2016 14:58
39 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
40 Morgan Avery 23 Jun 2016 13:58