On 2 June 2006, the Danish parliament (the Folketing) unanimously adopted Parliamentary Resolution B103 on the use of open standards for software in the public sector. The Resolution instructs the Government to ensure that the public sector’s use of information technology, including the use of software, should be based on open standards.Therefore, the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency (IT- og Telestyrelsen) has commissioned to IDC to evaluate the degree of “openness” of the leading standard setting organizations. Given the definition of “openness” in B103, this project has developed a framework for evaluating the ability of standard setting organizations to define “Open Standards”.Ten standard setting organizations were evaluated and all organizations had the opportunity to review and comment on the evaluation of their organization. The ten organizations are: CEN, Ecma, ETSI, IETF, ISO, ITU, NIST, OASIS, OMG, and W3C.
Looking at the ten organizations researched there are differences in the number of requirements in which they score positive. It is difficult to see any clear patterns in the ratings though. We believe there are a number of reasons for this. Standard organizations are generally aware of the need of openness because they all aim at providing successful, widely accepted standards. However, the concepts of openness and consensus have been implemented using different models that relate to the type of organization, their formal foundation and their degrees of formalization. We therefore see the apparent differences in openness as a sign of the structure chosen by the organizations.
In conclusion there are, indeed, differences between standard setting organizations in terms of “openness” and certainly in terms of how “openness” is implemented. It can be, however, difficult to make a distinction of which form of “openness” is the most appropriate.
Executive summary of “Evaluation of Ten Standard Setting Organizations with Regard to Open Standards” (92 page PDF version available here) posted with permission given by Per Andersen, Managing Director, IDC Nordic & Benelux.
