9th
![Ms Fraser-Moleketi, the people of Norway are behind you …
Bob Jolliffe from the Department of Science and Technology who is in Oslo for the SC34 meeting sent through these pictures and quotes.
[update: you can find the complete speech of Steve Pepper chairman of the Norwegian standards committee here]
Steve Pepper quoted this part of the PSA Minister’s speech (to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd): “The adoption of open standards by governments is a critical factor in building interoperable information systems which are open, accessible, fair and which reinforce democratic culture and good governance practices. In South Africa we have a guiding document produced by my department called the Minimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in Government (MIOS). The MIOS prescribes the use of open standards for all areas of information interoperability, including, notably, the use of the Open Document Format (ODF) for exchange of office documents. ODF is an open standard developed by a technical committee within the OASIS consortium. The committee represents multiple vendors and Free Software community groups. OASIS submitted the standard to the International Standards Organisation in 2005 and it was adopted as an ISO standard in 2006. South Africa is amongst a growing number of National Governments who have adopted ODF over the past year. It is unfortunate that the leading vendor of office software, which enjoys considerable dominance in the market, chose not to participate and support ODF in its products, but rather to develop its own competing document standard which is now also awaiting judgement in the ISO process. If it is successful, it is difficult to see how consumers will benefit from these two overlapping ISO standards. I would like to appeal to vendors to listen to the demands of consumers as well as Free Software developers. Please work together to produce interoperable document standards. The proliferation of multiple standards in this space is confusing and costly. And added : Ms Fraser-Moleketi, the people of Norway are behind you … the iso standard was approved by only three votes in the end. One of them was Norway’s. Reports of irregularities are coming in from other EU countries, including France and Denmark. Those votes must be changed from Yes to No and OOXML withdrawn as an ISO standard.
Bob also commented that it is “amazing to get people out on the street over document standards!”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/4gnKrDJdr7lcm1lma7p4JmeB_400.jpg)
Ms Fraser-Moleketi, the people of Norway are behind you …
Bob Jolliffe from the Department of Science and Technology who is in Oslo for the SC34 meeting sent through these pictures and quotes.
[update: you can find the complete speech of Steve Pepper chairman of the Norwegian standards committee here]
Steve Pepper quoted this part of the PSA Minister’s speech (to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd):
“The adoption of open standards by governments is a critical factor in building interoperable information systems which are open, accessible, fair and which reinforce democratic culture and good governance practices. In South Africa we have a guiding document produced by my department called the Minimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in Government (MIOS). The MIOS prescribes the use of open standards for all areas of information interoperability, including, notably, the use of the Open Document Format (ODF) for exchange of office documents. ODF is an open standard developed by a technical committee within the OASIS consortium. The committee represents multiple vendors and Free Software community groups. OASIS submitted the standard to the International Standards Organisation in 2005 and it was adopted as an ISO standard in 2006. South Africa is amongst a growing number of National Governments who have adopted ODF over the past year.
It is unfortunate that the leading vendor of office software, which enjoys considerable dominance in the market, chose not to participate and support ODF in its products, but rather to develop its own competing document standard which is now also awaiting judgement in the ISO process. If it is successful, it is difficult to see how consumers will benefit from these two overlapping ISO standards. I would like to appeal to vendors to listen to the demands of consumers as well as Free Software developers. Please work together to produce interoperable document standards. The proliferation of multiple standards in this space is confusing and costly.
And added : Ms Fraser-Moleketi, the people of Norway are behind you … the iso standard was approved by only three votes in the end. One of them was Norway’s. Reports of irregularities are coming in from other EU countries, including France and Denmark. Those votes must be changed from Yes to No and OOXML withdrawn as an ISO standard.
Bob also commented that it is “amazing to get people out on the street over document standards!”
