SE: Researchers: 'Worrying lack of policies on open standards'
Management and IT in Sweden's public administrations resist a move to open document formats, say two researchers from the University of Skövde in Sweden, Björn Lundell and Brian Lings. "There is a surprising and worrying lack of policies and strategies available from Swedish local authorities, health regions and governmental organisations."
Dr. Lundell, who also is the chair of Open Source Sweden, an industry association of Swedish open source companies, presented the most recent results of their ongoing study into the use of open standards and open source by Sweden's public administrations, during the Almedalen Week in the Swedish city of Visby, that took place between 28 June and 4 July.
The two researchers say users are increasingly interested in open IT standards, but this has little impact on IT policies. "Resistance is evident from senior management and IT support services. As far as document processing is concerned the sector is still overwhelmingly dominated by proprietary products and formats."
IT policy-making is left to managers and technicians, the researchers state. "For a public sector facing increasing demands for openness, and in a climate in which EU and national governments are increasingly calling for action, this is not a sustainable position."
The Swedish government officially favours open IT standards, but many public administrations ignore that policy, Lundell says. "This really is a sad story."
The two researchers in June 2008 sent a questionnaire to the same organisations that took part in a 2007 government enquiry into IT standards. Following the government's own recommendation that the use of open IT standards like the Open Document Format (ODF) should be promoted, the researchers emailed their questions using that format.
Only 24 percent of local authorities responded to the ODF questionnaire; 70 percent of respondents acknowledged that they were unable or unwilling to open the document. However, 84 percent endorsed Microsoft's proprietary Word application for such communication. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 4 percent claimed to have a policy on accepted document formats, and of these the majority simply endorsed the proprietary Microsoft Word.
A few public authorities protested the use of ODF, the researchers report. "Even though the Swedish association of Local Authorities and Health Regions recommends these organisations should be able to receive documents in that format."
Earlier results of the research of Lundell and Lings where published in the conference proceedings of the The 5th International Conference on Open Source Systems, in a report titled 'Openness to Standard Document Formats in Swedish Public Sector Organisations'.
More information:
Openness to Standard Document Formats in Swedish Public Sector Organisations (preview)
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