[GSDI Legal Econ] Using open standards at the European Parliament

[Roger Longhorn]

 From EDRI-gram this week:

8. European Parliament criticized for not using open standards
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A public petition was initiated by OpenForum Europe, The European 
Software Market Association, and the Free Software Foundation Europe 
asking the European Parliament (EP) to change its ICT system in order to 
allow the adoption of open standards.

The petition specifically points to the fact that the live web streaming 
from the European Parliament's plenary sessions is currently only 
available to those using Microsoft's Media Player. Also, it appears that 
members of the European Parliament are unable to "access documents sent 
to them in formats adhering to Open Standards, including the ISO 
standard for electronic office documents, the Open Document Format (ODF) 
- the primary format for an ecosystem of office productivity applications."

Graham Taylor, Chief Executive of OpenForum Europe said: "The benefits 
of the Internet were achieved from open standards, freedom of access, 
participation for all, innovation where it really mattered. Not 
proprietary lock-in and monopoly. Government and Parliament need to show 
leadership in ensuring full participation for all its citizens."

The petition explains that the EU Public procurement laws are based on 
the principles of transparency and non-discrimination, but the usage in 
the EP ICT systems of a proprietary solution with closed formats just 
means that "the European Parliament is dependent on a single vendor and 
that companies cannot freely compete on merit to provide applications 
and services."

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Back issues are available at www.edri.org/edrigram 

And this within a primary legislative European Institution - after the 
EC announced last month the latest round of fines for Microsoft (850+ 
million euro!) for engaging in anti-competitive practices - bringing 
their last 18 month total (for fines!) up to around 1.25 billion euro 
(that's 1250 million euro - just so there is no confusion) all for 
'anti-competitive' practices!

The mind boggles.

Kind regards

Roger