Fwd: [Dorset] Cabinet Office Survey on Open Standards in the Public Sector
Robert Bronsdon
For privacy reasons I'd really hope the government wouldn't pass this sort
of data onto a private company to sell as they see fit. Meh.
Following Terry's comment, "if we don't participate we can't complain
about the outcome" so get survey monkeying.
------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Terry Coles" <d-...@hadrian-way.co.uk>
To: "Dorset Linux User Group" <dor...@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Cc:
Subject: [Dorset] Cabinet Office Survey on Open Standards in the Public
Sector
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 20:24:05 +0100
All,
The Government has set up a Public Survey entitled 'Open Standards in the
Public Sector', see http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/UKGovOpenStandards.
This survey covers quite a wide range and some elements of it are unlikely
to
be relevant to LUG member's interests. However, it includes all the IT
Standards for web, email, etc and also document formats.
It takes a bit of dedication to fill it in (there are 120 questions
altogether), but whole sections can be skipped if they aren't relevant and
it
is permissible to leave questions unanswered. I found that I simply didn't
know enough about some aspects covered, but I knew enough to answer a fair
proportion of the survey.
Can I suggest that we make it a LUG Project to visit the Survey and fill it
in? Between us we probably know more about these technologies and
Standards
than most groups(certainly groups outside of software/web development), so
we
owe it to the Country to deliver some of that expertise on behalf of those
ordinary folk who will be saddled with unsuitable Standards if the vested
interests get a look-in.
Having said that they may already have got a look-in because the questions
about document formats in Section 11 state that ISO/IEC 29500:2008 (Office
Open XML (or MSXML to the rest of us)) is called Open Office XML, which is
easily confused with OpenOffice.org. Maybe it's a genuine mistake or maybe
the fix is in.
Anyway, like voting, if we don't participate we can't complain about the
outcome.
--
Robert Bronsdon