Influencing Government Policy on Open Standards
Context
The UK Government has been working on the development of a policy on use of open standards. A formal public consultation focused on open standards for software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT requirements and sought evidence to inform:
- the definition of open standard in the context of government IT;
- the meaning of mandation and the effects compulsory standards may have on government departments, delivery partners and supply chains;
- international alignment and cross-border interoperability.
This consultation was launched on 9 February 2012 and will scheduled to closed on 3 May 2012 (although the closing date was subsequently extended until 4 June 2012).
UKOLN ISC has giving feedback on the initial survey an the open standards consultation document.
Dates
Work started: 9 Feb 2011
Planned completion date: 3 May 2012
Actual completion date: 25 April 2012
Activities
This work involved reading documents published by the UK Government, responding to the documents and encouraging involvement from others within the UK higher and further educations sector.
Outputs
The outputs of this work were:
- Blog post on Preparing a Response to the UK Government’s Open Standards: Open Opportunities Document, UK Web Focus blog, 26 April 2012 which summarised experiences of support for open standards in JISC development programmes since the 1990s and encouragement of others to participate in consultation.
- Response to Chapter 1: Criteria for open standards
- Response to Chapter 2: Open standards mandation
- Response to Chapter 3: International alignment
This work was also mentioned in the JISC Daily News Update, 27 April 2012.
People
This work was led by Brian Kelly.