Open Standards and Corporations national style

I don't want to talk about the corporations which just "claim support open standards" like Microsoft because is fancy, needed and good masquerade. I want to talk about the corporations which are participating in the creation and maintenance of open standards.

I seen some of their action in policy making in Brussels over the years, some of it even had impact. Not so big thou, but the money spending for which they call their own policy is enormous. So the question is, why they do so much on big level and then in the end get beaten by their own national branches spread around EU. For sure is it lack of several things. National branches actually don't really know what is the corporate policy, except budgets, spending and salaries, which they care most about, ah yes and the limit of sold merchandise or services over the fiscal year. But they do engage in the policy making via various association for IT, egovernment, information society. But if you look closer on their members you find really bunch of Microsoft goldpartners and service providers, few hardware resellers and these guys.

I'm a committee member for standards here in Slovakia, under Ministry of Finance, durring our meetings I saw a lot of people from exactly these IT associations defending Microsoft propietary standards, with the money of IBM, Sun and Adobe. White papers clearly discrediting ODF and proposing OOXML or at least DOC. You can tell what is next. Yes, it's the consultations from them to government who just bought licenses from Microsoft for like 300.000 eur in december last year.

I just came to the begining, the beating from the bottom, national branches are in the end acting as their own enemy to HQ office. Enemy within, because of lack of managment, interest and lot of selfishness in private business.

I seen and heard of similar actions happening around EU member states, espiecially the ones
not from the western EU.

It's funny, so are you guys going to get it?

Council of Ministers calls on members to use Open Standards and also use Open Source

The Council of Ministers, the Council of Europe's highest decision-making body, calls on its' members to ensure a diversity of software models by mixing Open Source, free and proprietary software.

In a statement the council last week adopted recommendations on measures to increase the public service value of the Internet. The councils' members "should develop strategies which promote sustainable economic growth via competitive market structures in order to stimulate investment into critical Internet resources and ICTs." Ensuring a diversity of software including Open Source should be part of these strategies.

The council also recommends that members ensure their policies on telecommunications, broadcasting and the Internet make these IT systems interoperable by using open standards.

SKOSI joins egovernment committee in Slovakia

SKOSI, non for profit organization joined committee for standardization of information systems for public administration. The Committee for standardization of information systems is responsible for creating electronic standards for public administration in several sectors, egovernment, ehealth, European network and abroad communication. Committee is the supreme body for egovernment in the Slovak Republic under Ministry of Finance, egovernment section which was formerly hosted under Ministry of Telecomunications.

We are looking forward to bring more open standards into information systems in Slovak public sector.