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