Open Standards for eGovernance

Jochen Friedrich's Open Blog  - For more than half a decade Europe has played a leading role globally in defining framework conditions for eGovernment services provision. The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) version 1.0 was a breakthrough document in this respect. Essentially, it set three clear directions:

Openness must be a key principle in eGovernance; eGovernment services must be built on Open Standards and the term Open Standards was clearly defined; Open Source needs to be considered on equal footing with proprietary offerings.

These rules and directions should not come as a surprise to anyone. eGovernance and eGovernment services are – bluntly speaking – about the internet, about offering citizens and businesses information and services over the internet. Openness governs the internet and the web and Open Standards are at the core of it. Industry has broadly agreed on the respective open conditions in the relevant global standards bodies such as W3C, IETF or OASIS that deliver Open Standards.