Lodahl's blog: 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007

23 February 2007

News from the Danish government (on standards)

Last year the Danish parliament adopted the resolution B 103 about implementation of open standards for software in the public sector.

Today the Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation released a report that describes the implementation of the resolution. Here is a summary in english: http://itst.dk/static/nyhed/English%20summary.pdf .

In this report, public authorities mean local and regional administrations, government departments, agencies and directorates.

The report has been received positive today, because it seems that it will actually end up with more implementations soon. The report includes both some very vague parts as well as some very concrete areas with a very fast implementation.

The report includes 7 mandatory areas to implemented or planned implemented on January 1th. 2008. Among the seven mandatory areas is "Standards for exchanging documents between public authorities (Open Document Format and Office OpenXML)"

An open standard is defined as:

"That a standard is open implies that:

* the standard must be fully documented and publicly available,

* the standard must be freely implementable without economic, political or legal constraints on its implementation and use, now or in the future, and

* the standard should be managed and maintained in an open forum via an open process (standardization organization)."

Unfortunately there is no money with the resolution. An overall note is
"...if an economic impact assessment shows that this will not involve
additional costs to the public sector.".

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