about 7 months ago - No comments
As indicated in a 140 char note on Twitter, I’m leaving Europe. For a month, that is. I am going on a flight/roadtrip, part work, part vacation. Locationwise roughly as follows:
Toronto from July 17th to 25th.
Washington, DC from July 26th to 31st.
Ottawa from July 31st to August 6th.
Boston from August 7th [...]
about 2 years ago - 4 comments
Two of my students (Michael and Søren) did an interesting small project about the “document format war” in december, and we had a good discussion at the exam here this week. They’d interviewed three key actors in the Danish OpenXML/ODF-debate, and presented a very decent, if slightly biased, analysis.
But bias seem to be the menu [...]
about 2 years ago - No comments
I’m in the US (Washington, Boston, Washington) from 26 Nov to 7 Dec.
I have been invited to come over to Washington, DC, to attend a researchers and practioners meeting in the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, which will be held Thu-Sat this coming week.
After that, I go to Boston for the XML 2007 conference.
Pop quiz: At [...]
about 2 years ago - No comments
Moments ago, ISO issues a press release: Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard:
A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an International Standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required [...]
about 2 years ago - 2 comments
It’s official: Denmark has voted No with Comments to ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML. See Danish Standards’ press release (in Danish). They are submitting 64 pages of comments, and state that Denmark will work for an approval assuming the comments will be addressed.
I’ve read through the comments, and find them balanced and thorough. It will require [...]
about 2 years ago - 1 comment
Recently, the European Commission’s IDABC published a document written on contract by Gartner initiating the revision of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the Architecture Guidelines (AG). Check out the EIF v2.0 Gartner-report.
I represented Denmark in the comittee that created the EIF and maintained the AG, so of course I read the Gartner-report with a [...]
about 2 years ago - 3 comments
Jason Matusow of Microsoft: Denmark Says ODF and Open XML Ok. Jason calls it “a very positive step forward”. Leif Lodahl of OpenOffice DK also reports: One year evaluation, and comments: “There is no doubt that ODF is here to stay, but Microsoft must prove openness and willingness to other platforms and applications”.
Lars Roark, CIO [...]
about 2 years ago - No comments
A year ago, my former collegue Søren Peter Nielsen wrote, on behalf of the Danish government, a letter to Microsoft. Seems he got a response, and I’m sure it’ll interest XMLGrrl and many others, that an announcement was made yesterday: Agreement between the National IT and Telecom Agency and Microsoft: Agreement concerning partial support of [...]
about 2 years ago - No comments
Norway’s Minister of Government Administration and Reform, also Minister of IT, Ms Heidi Grande Røys, in a press announcement on Friday, Første skritt mot en offentlig sektor uten leverandørbindinger, announced that with the launch of the Norwegian Government’s interoperability framework, called Referansekatalog for IT-standarder), the Norwegian government takes “the first step towards a public [...]
about 2 years ago - No comments
Leif Lohdal is blogging much more continuously about the Danish open standards situation than I am. Time for me to catch up.
On 24 April, the Danish Open Source Business Association and the Danish IT Industry Association arranged a conference in Parliament, from which I reported (in Danish, like most of the following links) over at [...]
about 2 years ago
Frank Heemskerk, M.A., is not the Minister of Economic Affairs; he is the state secretary, which is one step down from the Minister, Maria van der Hoeven.
The article to which you have linked refers to an “action plan” written by the state secretary of Economic Affairs and supported by the state secretary of .. to accelerate the adoption of open standards and usage of open source software.
Although the government has made agreements with municipalities and other government bodies to consider open standards and open source software as a first choice, the announcement does not mean that the government will drop Microsoft documents for ODF immediately. Nothing has yet been signed into law (with the exception of open standards and open source being mentioned in the government plan for the year).
So, in short, the announcement points to an intention to stimulate OSS and open standards, but we’re quite far from every government machine running free software exclusively (or even partially).