Open Standards

From E-Parliament Wiki

Open standards¹ comply with the definition by the European Commission (IDABC programme²):

• the standard is approved and will be maintained by a non-profit organisation, and ongoing development will be on the basis of an open decision-making process that is accessible for all interested parties (consensus or majority decision, etc.);
• the standard is published and the specification document for the standard is freely available or can be obtained for a nominal contribution. It must be possible for everyone to copy it, make it available and use it, free or for a nominal price;
• the intellectual property – regarding any patents that may be present – of the standard or parts thereof is irrevocably made available on a royalty-free basis;
• there are no restrictions on reuse of the standard.In addition to this definition, the government uses the following two specifications in elabo-rating the action plan:
• Open Specification: an open specification is one that is published and whose specification document is freely available. Alternatively, it may be available for a nominal contribution. It must be possible for everyone to copy it, make it available and use it, free or for a nominal price.
• Free Specification: a free specification is an open specification that is free of legal restrictions making its use and distribution difficult. The intellectual property – regarding any patents that may be present – of the standard or parts thereof is irrevocably made available on a royalty-free basis.

The advantages and disadvantages of open standards and open source software have been investigated by various parties, including the Economic Research Foundation (SEO)³. The research concludes that the advantages of open standards are greater than the disadvantages. This appendix focuses in particular on the findings of the research.

Advantages of open standards:

• improved exchangeability of data;
• better accessibility to data (e.g., on websites);
• independence from suppliers encourages the market;
• reduced software production costs;
• greater independence from hardware systems and operating systems;
• reduced monopoly formation on the ICT supply side;
• potential positive effect on the trade balance and local knowledge economy.

Disadvantages of open standards:

• open standards are not available for all applications;
• open standards are not broadly supported in all cases by software suppliers, which limits the options for ICT support.

Many of the disadvantages described in the research are not exclusive to open standards and also apply to non-open standards, such as the need for migration costs for adapting existing software to open standards (or new open standards).

References

1. The Netherlands in Open Connection: An action plan for the use of Open Standards and Open Source Software in the public and semi-public sector, 2007, Ministry of Economic Affairs of The Netherlands
   
2. Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens
   
3. Costs and benefits of open standards and open source software in the Dutch public sector. Economic Research Foundation, Amsterdam, 2004