Posted on 06/27/2005 12:10:49 PM PDT by N3WBI3
On presenting his new plan for information technology in Norway - "eNorge 2009 the digital leap", Norwegian Minister of Modernization Morten Andreas Meyer today at a press conference in Oslo declared "Proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government."
Taking great care not to mention the name Microsoft directly, but rather referring to "the spreadsheet almost everyone use" or saying this is the last time I will present a plan for information technology being broadcast on the net in Windows Media, the Minister sent strong signals in the direction of Redmond to open up or become irrelevant to the Norwegian Government.
The Minister, as part of the plan, has charged all government institutions, both at the national and local level, to by the end of 2005 have worked out a recommendation for the use of open source code in the public sector. Further by the end of 2006 every body of the public sector in Norway must have in place a plan for the use of open source code and open standards.
The plan calls for a massive restructuring of Public sector in Norway where digital communication between every citizen and government will become the norm. Part of the plan is to provide every citizen with their own "home page" for communication with government and for opening services 24/7 to the public. In the process every Norwegian citizen will be provided with a personal electronic ID as a replacement for the numerous user-ids and passwords currently used throughout.
The plan clearly favors Open Source communities and solutions, and Linux, but will also favors Apple computer where increasingly open source technologies and open standards are finding their way into the historically proprietary Mac OS. It remains to be seen what response the plan will prompt from Microsoft, who has been very reluctant to open up its word processing, spreadsheet and media formats. Without support for open standard formats, Microsoft will rapidly make itself irrelevant as supplier to both public sector, businesses and private persons, as they all have the need to communicate electronically with the government in the future.
Also institutions and companies like the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) and TV2 will be greatly affected by the new policies, having based their Internet interactive TV and radio transmissions mainly on Microsoft Media formats.
Of great interest to businesses, the Minister also announced that public information, in the future, should be available free or significantly cheaper than current practice. A move he hoped would pave the way for new businesses taking advantage of this type of information.
OSS PING
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I dont think this will much hurt MS as they ahve been moving to open up their formats a bit at a time for the past couple of years..
I'd tell'em to go pound lutefisk in their....uh ....ears..........
The Power of Lutefisk
"Lutefisk" is an infamous Norwegian dish composed of fish soaked in lye. Want to know more?
A government using .doc, or .pdf is a defacto endorsement of that product and forces whoever wants to read the doing of their government to use a particular private corporations product. Microsoft has shown signs in recent years of understanding this and I don't think well see any compliance problems from them..
I'm sure that's got them quaking in their boots. What is the impact if one becomes irrelevant to an irrelevancy?
They did say it'll be available next month on 300k 5.25" floppy, though.
Well fisrt norway, and then the sweeds, and then the swiss... and then where are you ;)
No thanks! You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to know what's wrong with this policy.
Their widespread forced adoption of open-source products to do everything they do now, in that timeline, will be chaos. I will be watching with
Upon closer reading, i guess they have until 2006 to come up with a "plan" so might be a while before I get to eat any popcorn.
Naa this ain't an opensource problem, this is a poor policy problem. You dont think if there was no opensource software the good people of Norway would not have to go to a single ID for "their convenience" just using a closed source system?
Go ahead and enjoy your bag right now, it out to be fun to see the euro's surrender a freedom while saying American are repressed... When they impliment it, ill buy you a bag..
The single user ID is for "their" convenience, not for your privacy.
Just so, and certainly to be avoided! Clearly the preferred alternative is to have every government agency worldwide develop its own operating systems, etc. and then give them all away for free. It is the very definition of insanity to allow private corporations the power to create useful products at their own expense, and then compete freely with other corporations' products until there is a clear industry leader, and then have government agencies simply buy that product off of the shelf and use it to perform vital government functions. What were we thinking when we adopted this crazy model to begin with? Thank you, Norway!
What the hell does this minister propose as an alternative?
ok im a bit slow but how do you get the above from
A government using .doc, or .pdf is a defacto endorsement of that product and forces whoever wants to read the doing of their government to use a particular private corporations product.
I dont care if they all run windows, what I care about is that I don't have to run X corps' word processor, y corps' on-line document viewer, Z corps' browser, and A corps' operating system. Clearly the solution is not a bunch of operating systems, but a handful of open document formats.
It is the very definition of insanity to allow private corporations the power to create useful products at their own expense, and then compete freely with other corporations' products until there is a clear industry leader, and then have government agencies simply buy that product off of the shelf and use it to perform vital government functions.
No one is saying that a corporation does not have the right to make whatever format with whatever license they want, to think that is whats going on (at least in my post) is insanity. It would be as stupid as me narrowing your position to mean that the government should not have to share any of its documents with the people of that nation. I think the Constitution and any copies of it should be kept under a locked key that only people with a certain amount of money to buy a copy of the key.
Dont know right now, I do know that an open format for documents is as not as important in government work as translating the Bible into German was for Christianity. It is however the same concept, let all the people no matter what OS, or word processor they run have access to the information
The Danes also have their national dish. I don't have Danish vowels on my keyboard, so I can't spell it precisely here, but the pronunciation is something like "Roth-groll-meth-flootheh", with all the "th's" sounding like the "th" in our word "the"; it's strawberries cooked in a potato-starch gruel, accompanied with a bit of thick cream. While somewhat bland, the taste is not bad; but it has the exact appearance and texture of bloody mucous. The Danes get a big kick out of watching foreigners try to eat it. They also serve, at breakfast, a cheese that has the exact odor of human excrement.
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