The Cabinet Office has just closed a consultation on open standards for government projects. The questions asked are worth a read as it shows an encouraging level of enthusiasm for tackling a long-standing problem in government IT – vendor lock-in.
However, as encouraging as the consultation is, I feel that the definition of ‘open standards’ is too restrictive – less is more. The fundamental definition of an ‘open standard’ is one where all details of the standard are publicly available (perhaps on a Government site, such as data.gov.uk) and can be implemented for free, with no restrictions at all. There must be no question of royalties, payments or transfer of any sort of rights or intellectual property to any other party. Anything more restrictive than this definition cannot really count as ‘open’.
It should also be noted that under UK law, standards (of data or document formats) should not be patentable. Any mention of patents in this context gives the impression that this is the not the case. According to the guidelines of the UK Patent Office, software (along with mathematics, business processes and creative works) is not patentable. It is unclear how a standard could be considered software – it’s probably closer to a creative work or business process, but again, these are not patentable. Patents in software are a demonstrably bad thing for the software industry. It is alarming that the UK relaxed its attitude to software patents as recently as 2008, given the evidence from other countries, especially the US, where software patents are stifling innovation and preventing smaller companies from challenging existing monopolies.
As well as patents there is, of course, copyright. Again I would argue that copyrights behind any standard should be transferred to the standards body as part of the standards process, and such standards should be reproducible without charge but with attribution, very much along the lines of the Creative Commons model. Copyrights are an important part of the software industry and need to be enforced. This is not just true of closed-source, commercial software but also of open source software, which depends on copyright to ensure it remains free. I would never argue that copyright is a bad thing for software, although I would suggest that the period for which copyrights last has become ridiculously long and the public domain has suffered – something along the lines of 25 years or lifetime of the copyright holder (where the holder is an individual), whichever is longer, would be much more appropriate.
If some sort of attempt to use open standards is not made then the Government will always pay more than necessary for software and IT services. Using proprietary, closed standards restricts potential vendors and, crucially for the UK’s IT sector, locks-out most SMEs. Open standards mean a level playing field, less vendor lock-in and cheaper procurement.
Open standards make things much easier for businesses, especially SMEs. Closed standards eliminate smaller companies from procurements as they often cannot afford the huge licensing fees that large companies may charge for the right to use their unpublished standards.
Some may argue that FRAND standards could level the playing field between open source and proprietary solutions. Indeed, this might help the larger, proprietary suppliers negotiate with each other, but any kind of FRAND arrangement is no substitute for a free and open standard – that is the only route to a level playing field and efficiency.
If the government insisted on the use of open, published standards for all IT procurement, IPL would be able to use the software and tools most suitable for each task. Any company, such as IPL, selling services or software to Government for any length of time will find itself working on similar projects (selling clinical systems to PCTs, for example) for different organisations. If central government and all public sector bodies mandated open standards we would know that we could use the same approaches for each customer, saving everyone time and money. We would also know that any existing system at the customer site would be something our systems could integrate with and, even if we have not integrated with it before, we would know that the specifications for the relevant file formats etc. were publicly available and had no restrictions on implementation. From the government’s perspective, competition is certain to increase as more suppliers will be able to bid for government work that was previously restricted to those who have agreements to use various proprietary formats. More suppliers will provide greater innovation.
Open standards are important to the way that government works and public data is held, and as such the management of them should be considered a core government function. The body tasked with governing and managing these standards would be much safer in government hands (as a function of the TSB, for example) than if it were to be contracted out to a large IT company to manage, to avoid conflict of interests. No charge or hindrance should be made for any access to any of the technical specifications, which should be available to anyone on demand. It should be mandated that all IT systems procured with public money must use open standards, where ‘open’ is royalty and patent-free, as described previously.
The move to fully open standards in government must be done as soon as possible. For every day that passes, more public data is locked-in to proprietary systems and the problem, and expense, gets worse.
