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 | 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 |
| 82 | 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 |
| 83 | 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 | |
| 84 | Michael Fincham | 3 Aug 2016 13:47 | ||
| 85 | Michel Van Eeckhout | Open standards are essential in any democracy. | 25 Jul 2020 06:50 | |
| 86 | Michelle Beavan | Exess Connectivity Ltd | 15 Aug 2016 08:27 | |
| 87 | Mike Cowie | 8 Jun 2016 20:44 | ||
| 88 | Mike Riversdale | Access Granted NZ | 26 Jan 2019 12:42 | |
| 89 | Monica Corbett Whattam | 11 Nov 2016 18:06 | ||
| 90 | Morgan Avery | 23 Jun 2016 13:58 | ||
| 91 | Nathan Brown | Springload | 22 Mar 2017 09:18 | |
| 92 | 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 |
| 93 | 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. | 5 Sep 2015 11:43 | |
| 94 | Nigel Bovey | 26 Jul 2015 20:58 | ||
| 95 | 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 |
| 96 | Pikiora Wylie | 16 Aug 2015 21:05 | ||
| 97 | 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 |
| 98 | 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 |
| 99 | Reed Wade | 22 Jul 2015 23:32 | ||
| 100 | Richard Dougherty | 25 Jul 2015 23:05 | ||
| 101 | Richard Hector | 23 Jul 2015 11:06 | ||
| 102 | Richard Law | 4 Aug 2016 17:32 | ||
| 103 | Richard McMillan | 22 Mar 2017 09:38 | ||
| 104 | Rimu Atkinson | 9 Nov 2022 10:10 | ||
| 105 | 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 |
| 106 | Rob Pearson | IT manager of company with over 700 staff | NZ government (and District Health Boards) are behaving anti-competitively, have a strong history of being closed to open computing standards, please stop being an embarrassing laggard in this regard, here are just 2 examples and both are easily fixed: -NZ uses standards for '2' editable document file formats, 'both' controlled by the same single vendor, a better and single file format has existed for a decade now. The UK government sorted this one out https://www.gov.uk/guidance/open-document-format-odf-guidance-for-uk-government. -Mandating that business partners use Microsoft Internet Explorer to work within their contracts, this is outrageous in 2015. | 27 Sep 2015 12:40 |
| 107 | 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 | 3 Mar 2016 10:35 | |
| 108 | Robert Fromont | 15 Aug 2016 04:58 | ||
| 109 | Robert Hunt | Sole trader | 29 Jul 2015 15:03 | |
| 110 | Robin de Haan | The New Zealand Government should commit to open standards and not be prepared to trade them away. | 31 Jul 2015 21:40 | |
| 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. | 23 Jul 2015 17:46 | |
| 112 | Roger Wayne Willcocks | L-space Design Limited | 3 Aug 2016 14:55 | |
| 113 | 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 | |
| 114 | Sam Bonner | 22 Jul 2015 16:45 | ||
| 115 | Sam Bristow | 17 Jan 2018 11:25 | ||
| 116 | Sasha Mrkailo | Digital is a major part of public infrastructure. It should be treated like that. | 14 Mar 2023 09:36 | |
| 117 | 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! | 9 Dec 2015 09:52 | |
| 118 | Stephen Harlow | 28 Feb 2017 11:22 | ||
| 119 | 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 | |
| 120 | Tabitha Roder | 22 Jul 2015 20:09 |