Germany's Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology, Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, wants to use open standards to ensure interoperability and independence from IT vendors, she says in an interview published by C'T magazine this week

According to her, only by using open standards can the federal government avoid being locked-in by IT vendors and avoid risks. The German IT news site Heise, owned by the same publisher, reports that the CIO wants to avoid forcing citizens to use certain software products. At the moment, electronic documents are not ideal for the exchange of information, since many office applications are incompatible, Heise writes.

Open standards benefit IT service providers, Heise writes, for they are not forced to become a certified partner of an IT vendor in order to do business.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) welcomes the statements by the federal CIO. An open standard must be published completely and its use may not be limited nor hindered by legal provisions, the group cites. "In this way, the government stresses that a standard is open only when it can be used by free software vendors without legal or technical obstacles", says Matthias Kirschner, Germany Coordinator of FSFE, in a statement published yesterday.

Market standards

The FSFE says that the CIO makes clear in the interview that for the government, the term market standards does not specify standards that dominate the market. It merely is the term for the standards not developed by the government. In the future, all mandatory standards will be open standards, the FSFE quotes the Government IT Commissioner. 

The term market standards is often used to counter open standards, writes the FSFE. This is how the state of Saxony in May explained its choosing proprietary standards. The FSFE protested this interpretation: "With her statement Rogall-Grothe shows that the term market standards in no way justifies the use of proprietary standards in government."

More information:

C't Magazin (in German)

Heise news item (in German)

FSFE item (in German)