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 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/ 15 Jul 2026 20:40
2 Benjamin Kwan Elastik Mandatory open standards should be treated as a governance requirement for critical systems, public-sector technology, citizen data, and cross-platform interoperability. They should not be used to kill innovation, but they absolutely should be used to prevent lock-in, monopoly control, and digital dependency. 13 May 2026 16:12
3 Devesh Kumar Self-employed 7 Feb 2026 01:23
4 Michael Doerner TechnologyWise Ltd Non-open (proprietary) file formats lead to lock-in vendor dependencies which have been happening all around Microsoft's file formats and application dependencies. European countries are reducing these dependencies for many reasons: "German state ditches Microsoft for open-source software": https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/german-state-ditches-microsoft-for-open-source-software/K5YACGI56VHYVM3SDNPCQNSG7A/ "Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux": https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-denmark-is-dumping-microsoft-office-and-windows-for-libreoffice-and-linux/ "One of France's largest cities has now also ditched Microsoft for open source software": https://share.google/Ly8upTVhlS5f94AwA "Digital sovereignty - a trend in Europe, sparked by Microsoft": https://tuta.com/blog/digital-sovereignty-europe New Zealand as a nation and NZ businesses should aim to minimise those dependencies too. 12 Sep 2025 08:59
5 Jeremy List 3 May 2025 17:31
6 Jeffrey John Martin 26 Mar 2025 17:25
7 Sasha Mrkailo Digital is a major part of public infrastructure. It should be treated like that. 14 Mar 2023 09:36
8 Elizabeth Doughty 2 Feb 2023 00:39
9 Adam Tansell-Murrow 5 Jan 2023 12:37
10 Elizabeth Doughty 17 Dec 2022 11:01
11 Rimu Atkinson 9 Nov 2022 10:10
12 Christopher Dempsey 2 Nov 2022 19:59
13 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. 22 Oct 2022 01:39
14 John Sutcliffe 8 Aug 2022 19:29
15 Martin Hohman-Marriott United Scientists CORE Limited open standards are crucial for: - collaboration - future-proof technologies - resource conservation 7 Jan 2022 18:45
16 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
17 Lovepreet Singh 7 Sep 2020 12:14
18 Michel Van Eeckhout Open standards are essential in any democracy. 25 Jul 2020 06:50
19 Carl Geib 16 Jun 2020 13:41
20 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
21 Mike Riversdale Access Granted NZ 26 Jan 2019 12:42
22 Sam Bristow 17 Jan 2018 11:25
23 Loic Teixeira 22 Mar 2017 11:03
24 Richard McMillan 22 Mar 2017 09:38
25 Nathan Brown Springload 22 Mar 2017 09:18
26 Jonathan Garlick 22 Mar 2017 09:14
27 Eion Robb 8 Mar 2017 21:07
28 Stephen Harlow 28 Feb 2017 11:22
29 Lachlan Wimsett 11 Dec 2016 18:17
30 Andrew Mason The Knowledge Group Ltd. 23 Nov 2016 09:58
31 David Nind 21 Nov 2016 22:24
32 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
33 Don Christie Catalyst IT 18 Nov 2016 13:09
34 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
35 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
36 Grant Paton-Simpson PSAL Open standards = competition = superior results 17 Nov 2016 19:30
37 Monica Corbett Whattam 11 Nov 2016 18:06
38 Brent Wood 9 Nov 2016 11:54
39 James Nisbet Bandit Design 8 Nov 2016 10:31
40 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