UK Government re-endorses Open Source and Open Standards

[Kate Walker]

Colleagues may be interested to learn that the UK Government's Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council has recently re-endorsed its 2004 policy of using Open Source 'where it gave the best value for money to the taxpayer in delivering public services'.

Action 8 - Open Standards - of the Action Plan states, in particular, that the Government will specify requirements by reference to open standards and require compliance with open standards in solutions where feasible. It will support the use of Open Document Format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) as well emerging open versions of previously proprietary standards (eg ISO 19005-1:2005 ("PDF") and ISO/IEC 29500 ("Office Open XML formats"). It will work to ensure that government information is available in open formats and will make this a required standard for government websites.

The UK CIO report can be viewed here:
http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformation...rce/action.asp

Interesting to compare that position with the outcome of a review undertaken by Sir Peter Gershon for the Australian Government in 2008. That report only made a passing reference to the need for open standards (page 35) and use of open source technologies (page 43), noting that the Government of Brazil and the Department of Defense in the US had embraced or advocated the use of such technologies.

Gershon's report can be viewed here:
http://www.finance.gov.au/publicatio...iew/index.html

Andrew