Promotion of open standards in Poland

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On 14 December 2006 a Coalition for Open Standards was established by a
large group of IT companies and organizations in Poland with a view to
promote open technological standards.

The coalition aims at taking measures to ensure freedom of choice for IT
solutions for Polish citizens as well as businesses and administration
bodies by enforcing open standards for information storage and exchange.

The use of open standards has numerous advantages among which the
possibility to freely exchange information, the freedom of choosing the IT
tool suppliers, an increased flexibility and interoperability in
implementing IT solutions, an increased competitiveness and quality of
systems on the Polish market.

The lack of open standards leads to higher costs, closed formats for sharing
information requiring the use of specific software.

The Coalition for Open Standards includes companies present on the Polish
market, such as Corel, IBM, Macrologic, Novell, Oracle, etc.,
but also organizations such as Aviary.pl, Internet Society Poland, the
Professional Linux Association, the Cities Online Association and the PRO
Polish Software Market Association. The new coalition intends to promote
open standards through its website, as well as by educational and
informational
campaigns for the public.

Large interest on open standards has been shown in many EU countries. Thus,
on 2 November, the Athens Internet Governance Forum hosted in Athens the
Open Standards, Interoperability and Government Procurement event where one
recommendation for Governments was to follow the example of countries such
as Denmark or Belgium in adopting Open Document Format especially for public
records.

During the IGF meeting, a Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards
was created. This Dynamic Coalition wants to frame and define the most
urgent problems related to open technology standards and application
interoperability and suggest straightforward, workable solutions that can be
implemented by all stakeholders.

Polish Coalition for Open Standards
http://www.standardy.org

Open standards for information exchange and storage a prerequisite for the
information society development (14.12.2006)
http://www.standardy.org/node/31

Promoting Open Standards for the Participation Age (31.10.2006)
http://www.sun.com/2006-1031/int_gov/index.jsp

IGF Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (2.11.2006)
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/igf/athens110206/key_docs.html