Petition für offene Standards in der EU

Auf openparliament.eu kann man eine Petition für offene Standards unterschreiben. Der gesamte Petitionstext ist in fünf Sprachen online nachzulesen. Es geht u.a. um ODF und freie Formate für Onlinemedien, und Beispiele sind Extremadura in Spanien und die Niederlande (PDF-Link).

We believe that the current situation, where the European Parliament’s ICT runs on proprietary operating systems and on software that is not interoperable with that of other vendors, where therefore citizens and stakeholder groups wishing to participate in the legislative process are forced to use the products of a single company, is in conflict with the first article of Chapter 1 in the Treaty of the European Union, which stipulates that “…decisions are taken with the greatest possible respect for openness and as near as possible to the citizens.”

A clear and simple example of this is the live web streaming from the European Parliament’s plenary sessions, a service aimed at improving insight into the democratic process, which is currently only available to those using Microsoft’s MediaPlayer. We have also understood that Members of the European Parliament are unable to access documents sent to them in formats adhering to Open Standards, including the ISO standard for electronic office documents, the Open Document Format (ODF) – the primary format for an ecosystem of office productivity applications.

The situation also has implications for competition. EU Public procurement laws are based on the principles of transparency and non-discrimination (Article 23 (8) of Directive 2004/18/EC), yet the lock-in of the European Parliament’s ICT to systems based on proprietary, closed formats means that the European Parliament is dependent on a single vendor and that companies cannot freely compete on merit to provide applications and services.

The European Parliament has recently endorsed texts that mandate the compatibility and interoperability of systems in policy fields such as rail transport and satellite radionavigation. The European Parliament clearly recognises the role of interoperability in promoting innovation and competition, and on improving user choice, while reducing technological and industrial risks as well as dependencies. We are confident that once the Parliament has taken the above into consideration, it will take action to improve interoperability between citizens and governments by moving its ICT systems to ones that are based on Open Standards.

Ich hab schon unterzeichnet, wie bisher 555 andere auch.

Update: Jetzt gibts auch die offizielle Pressemitteilung dazu. Und der Zählerstand steht bereits bei 661 Unterzeichnenden.