OFE Chairman delivers speech in session of European E-government conference

OFE Chairman delivers speech in session of European E-government conference Graham Taylor of OFE was honoured to be asked to speak at the prestigious UK Presidency European e-government conference on transforming public services. Coming in the wake of the publication of the UK’s IT strategy and the i2010 initiative launched by the European Commission, the conference was full of top European decision-makers, incorporating Ministers from across Europe, including Jim Murphy, UK civil servants, and European Commissioners and was an ideal opportunity to convey the Open Source Software message.

Graham spoke on the 2nd morning of the conference as part of a session on interoperability and open standards and contributed to a lively and fascinating debate.
The session was chaired by a representative of the Irish government and facilitated by IDABC’s Barbara Held. Opening remarks concentrated on the tensions existent
between government and private sector and the problems with interoperability and the need for governments to take a holistic view.

Denmark’s Mikkel Hemmingsen, of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation talked about his country’s experiences in facilitating interoperability. Denmark has adopted a specific set of standards for planning and procuring to ensure interoperability and openness, and it was fascinating to hear about this in detail. Then the debate picked up with presentations from the Business Software Alliance, and then Graham. Benoît Muller of BSA stressed the importance of patent rights, under the RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) basis, and proper fees and licensing. He also stressed the importance of standards to ensure that interoperability was successful.

It fell to Graham Taylor to respond to both speakers which he did with a presentation entitled “Lock-in – the hidden cost of IT”. He explained that OFE was an industrybased organisation representing users and suppliers and supporting open source software, especially open standards. He spoke about the fascinating developments in Massachusetts focussed on interoperability, and explained to the audience that they had adopted document standards of ODF or PDF, and not Microsoft Office. Graham stressed that openness was a means to an end – with that end being interoperability, linked in with the conference’s theme of transformation. He disagreed with Benoît Muller’s comments on RAND stating that RAND was not something that could be looked forward to and expressing the concerns of Open Source Software developers who feel a danger of infringement of development. Graham stressed the need for a genuinely mixed software economy and took the opportunity to show how this is viable, highlighting the successful Open Source Academy programme and the development of Certified Open™ .

Questions were raised on semantics, the need for clear definition of open standards and the future of RAND. Graham in response called for an end to the silo culture, and stressed the need for open standards to be market approved and then independently developed and maintained. He concluded by stating: “in the area of interoperability there are no ifs, there are no buts you have to have a standard format across all developers”.

The session brought top-quality high-level debate to a programme that included Ministers and Commissioners’ keynote speeches and presentations from top-level industry representatives. The session was concluded with the chair stating “Open Source software can be shark-infested waters, but we are through the water unscathed”.