UK govt calls for open standards

The UK government has rolled out an open source consultation process, and called on the IT community to engage in defining 'open standards' for government, TechWeek Europe reports.

“The government's ICT strategy is delivering savings across the board and will make sure we have an IT system fit for the 21st Century,” says Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office.

The UK Cabinet Office is calling on the technology community to give their views on what open source and open standards mean for government IT, Computerworld UK states.

Called 'Open Standards: Open Opportunities, Flexibility and Efficiency in Government IT', the consultation aims to define open standards for software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT.

It comes nearly a year after the government published its ICT strategy, which outlined government's commitment to create a common IT infrastructure based on compulsory open standards.

The British Standards Institution (BSI) had previously threatened the UK with expulsion from international standards bodies if the Cabinet Office implemented the open standards policy it revealed in January 2011, ComputerWeekly.com writes.

BSI was backed by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and its European counterpart CEN/CENELEC, as well as the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.