What the hell does this minister propose as an alternative?
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
He proposes that private enterprise expend time, effort, and money to develop another format and refine it so that it is comparable with .pdf.
After doing so, they should then take the next and obvious step of making zero money in return for this work by making it an 'open' or non-proprietary format, so that anyone can write readers and writers to the format and forgo paying the developing company any money.
This the private company will do, to the detriment of its employees and its stockholders, and the amusement of any competitors it might have, because the Norwegian official Said So. If they fail to do this, they will be forced to chop down the tallest tree in the forest with ....
a herring! (dramatic clash of music)
Ghostscript is just reader software that interprets postscript files. It's not a format. But yes your general statement about pdf is correct. It's the defacto standard.