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