Common understanding on the use of open standards for software in the public sector

Regarding the use of open standards in the public sector, the Liberal Party, The Social Democratic Party, The Danish People’s Party, The Socialist People’s Party, The Conservatives, The Social Liberals and The Unity List, in agreement with Liberal Alliance have concluded the following:

1. Under parliamentary resolution B103 (session 2005/06) the government must ensure that public use of information technology, including use of software is based on open standards. The requirement for use of open standards applies to procurement of new software and major updates and should be cost-neutral as described in the existing criteria for the public sector.

New requirements for mandatory open standards for document formats

To promote the use of software based on open standards in the public sector and particularly to promote competition within office suite software and to ensure that citizens and businesses are independent of certain office suites in their communication with the public sector, the following will be conducted:

2. With the purpose of ensuring that public authorities communicate using open standards a list of approved mandatory open standards in the public sector is produced. The Expert Committee on Open Standards, established autumn 2008 will after consulting The OIO Committee recommend to the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, when - and by what standards - the list should be updated.
   The following criteria must be fulfilled before a standard can be approved for the list. The standard must be:

• Fully documented and publicly available.
• Freely implementable without economic, political or legal limitations on implementation and use.
• Approved by an internationally acknowledged standard organization such as ISO, and standardized and maintained in an open forum through an open process.
• It must be demonstrated that the standard can be implemented by anyone directly in its entirety and on several platforms.
• Interoperable with other standards on the list within the demands described in the Danish functionality threshold ("Funktionalitetsloftet").

Non-editable documents

3. It will be mandatory for all public authorities that documents, which are to be read but not edited, taking effect in 2010 will be send to citizens and businesses, in PDF/A-1. Same principle applies when authorities publish documents, which are to be read but not edited, on official websites.

Editable documents

4. Taking effect from 1 April 2011 it will be mandatory for all governmental authorities (1) to send and receive documents in formats on the list mentioned in section 2 - including ODF. To ensure that everyone - regardless of platform - has access to editable documents, governmental authorities must - if they publish editable documents on their websites - do so in ODF and other document formats concordant with the list.
5. The government will issue negotiations with municipalities and regions for the purpose to implement the obligation on editable documents for all public authorities with regards to the "comply or explain" principle.

Other formats

6. Moreover, all public authorities shall also - to ensure citizens’ freedom of choice – be able to receive documents in all popular formats widely used (2)
7. The political parties note, that the government will follow the development of standards for document formats and report to the parliament in the annual IT and Telecommunications Policy Report.
8. Until the list takes effect, no technical barriers through procurement of new software and major updates of office suite software in the state, which may hinder the introduction of open standards, must be allowed. As a rule, future office suite software must support the open standards from the list mentioned in paragraph 2.
9. The political parties agree that the government in its future procurement policies for software should encourage competition by taking into account the concerns raised in the Competition Authority's report (3)

(1) Authorities are defined here as departments and agencies, etc.

(2) "formats widely used" means formats that public authorities regularly encounter in a given context.

(3) Paragraph 5.2 of the report: "Legal constraints associated with office software," 11th June 2009, Devoteam Competition Authority