The latest blowback from the OOXML adoption process emerged last Friday in Brasilia, Brazil.  This newest challenge to the continued relevance of ISO and IEC was thrown when major IT agencies of six nations - Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Paraguay, South Africa and Venezuela - signed a declaration that deploring the refusal of ISO and IEC to further review the appeals submitted by the National Bodies of four nations.  Those nations were Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela, and the statement is titled the CONSEGI 2008 Declaration, after the conference at which it was delivered.  The Declaration notes, "That these

The issues which emerged over the past year have placed all of us at a difficult crossroads. Given the organisation's inability to follow its own rules we are no longer confident that ISO/IEC will be capable of transforming itself into the open and vendor-neutral standards setting organisation which is such an urgent requirement. What is now clear is that we will have to, albeit reluctantly, re-evaluate our assessment of ISO/IEC, particularly in its relevance to our various national government interoperability frameworks.

The statement was released at the close of CONSEGI 2008, a major South and Latin American IT conference focusing on free software, and convened by the International Congress of Electronic Society and Government.  The conference reportedly attracted 2000 registrants, including many senior government officials, including Brazil's Minister of Science and Technology.  The free program included many workshops on open source migration in areas such as education, government and development, as well as a focus on how information technology can be used to increase transparency between the governors and the governed, and to promote democracy.

This connection between the deployment of IT in government and the development of standards is one that ISO and IEC either fail to understand or refuse to regard as a matter for their concern.  Instead, the two dominant de jure IT bodies have consistently stated that their remit is purely to provide a venue within which national representatives can agree upon standards, rather than a place within which undue vendor influence can be avoided or (even) technical quality can be guaranteed.  Increasingly, countries such as those that have signed this declaration are concluding that the ISO and IEC are either unwilling, or unable (or both) to guarantee process purity.

In fact, governments throughout the world are becoming increasingly aware of the essential role that information and communications technology (ICT) standards must play in preserving what I have called our "Civil ICT Rights."  Those rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom to interact with government - all of which are increasingly exercised not in the real, but in the virtual world - or not at all.  If (for example) the cost of desktop is too great, or the necessary software is too unaccommodating to those with disabilities, then vital freedoms that people have fought and died to secure may be carelessly compromised or lost. 

Governments around the world are busy crafting "interoperability frameworks" to streamline the operation, efficiency and transparency of governments.  They are also now realizing that there are certain "Civil ITC Standards" - such as document formats and accessibility standards - that are essential to make these frameworks work.  What happened in the course of the OOXML adoption process has left such governments shaken by the realization that the type of democratic involvement and protection from undue vendor influence that should accompany the development of such standards, and ensure their free, unfettered use, cannot be delivered by the same systems that they have relied on in the past.

Specifically, the Declaration calls out these perceived failings:

1. The bending of the rules to facilitate the fast track processing of DIS29500 [OOXML] remains a significant concern to us. That the ISO TMB did not deem it necessary to properly explore the substance of the appeals must, of necessity, put confidence in those institutions ability to meet our national requirements into question.

2. The overlap of subject matter with the existing ISO/IEC26300 (Open Document Format) standard remains an area of concern. Many of our countries have made substantial commitments to the use of ISO/IEC26300, not least because it was published as an ISO standard in 2006.

3. The large scale adoption of a standard for office document formats is a long and expensive exercise, with multi-year projects being undertaken in each of our countries. Many of us have dedicated significant time and resources to this effort. For example, in Brazil, the process of translation of ISO/IEC26300 into Portuguese has taken over a year.

Up until now, representatives of the traditional system have often dismissed criticism of the OOXML process as being simply the noise making of FOSS advocates that don't understand how standards are developed or of those controlled by interested vendors.  But this was never the case.  ISO/IEC would be well advised to take this latest declaration seriously, as the words of the Declaration are also being followed by aggressive action - at the governmental agency level - in several of the countries that signed the Declaration, and in others as well. 

As significantly, there are serious discussions ongoing in a number of quarters that may result in the formation of new organizations to provide the market needs that ISO and IEC are apparently unwilling to provide.  I will report in detail on several of these initiatives in the months ahead.  Clearly, as the CONSEGI 2008 Declaration makes clear, any such organization will find a welcome audience with those governments that have "reluctantly" or otherwise, concluded that ISO and IEC are no longer interested in meeting their needs.

Thanks to Aslam Raffee, one of the signers of the Declaration (he is the Chairman of the South African Government IT Officer’s Council Working Group on Open Standards Open Source Software), who first brought it to my attention and was the first to post the text to the Web.  You can find his entry here.

CONSEGI 2008 DECLARATION

We, the undersigned representatives of state IT organisations from Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Paraguay, note with disappointment the press release from ISO/IEC/JTC-1 of 20 August regarding the appeals registered by the national bodies of Brazil, South Africa, India and Venezuela. Our national bodies, together with India, had independently raised a number of serious concerns about the process surrounding the fast track approval of DIS29500. That those concerns were not properly addressed in the form of a conciliation panel reflects poorly on the integrity of these international standards development institutions.

Whereas we do not intend to waste any more resources on lobbying our national bodies to pursue the appeals further, we feel it is important to make the following points clear:

1. The bending of the rules to facilitate the fast track processing of DIS29500 remains a significant concern to us. That the ISO TMB did not deem it necessary to properly explore the substance of the appeals must, of necessity, put confidence in those institutions ability to meet our national requirements into question.

2. The overlap of subject matter with the existing ISO/IEC26300 (Open Document Format) standard remains an area of concern. Many of our countries have made substantial commitments to the use of ISO/IEC26300, not least because it was published as an ISO standard in 2006.

3. The large scale adoption of a standard for office document formats is a long and expensive exercise, with multi-year projects being undertaken in each of our countries. Many of us have dedicated significant time and resources to this effort. For example, in Brazil, the process of translation of ISO/IEC26300 into Portuguese has taken over a year.
   

The issues which emerged over the past year have placed all of us at a difficult crossroads. Given the organisation's inability to follow its own rules we are no longer confident that ISO/IEC will be capable of transforming itself into the open and vendor-neutral standards setting organisation which is such an urgent requirement. What is now clear is that we will have to, albeit reluctantly, re-evaluate our assessment of ISO/IEC, particularly in its relevance to our various national government interoperability frameworks. Whereas in the past it has been assumed that an ISO/IEC standard should automatically be considered for use within government, clearly this position no longer stands.

Signed:

Aslam Raffee (South Africa)

Chairman, Government IT Officer's Council Working Group on Open Standards Open Source Software

Marcos Vinicius Ferreira Mazoni (Brazil)

Presidente, Servico Federal de Processamento de Dados

Carlos Eloy Figueira (Venezuela)

President, Centro Nacional de Tecnologías de Información

Eduardo Alvear Simba (Ecuador)

Director de Software Libre, Presidencia de la República

Tomas Ariel Duarte C. (Paraguay)


Director de Informática, Presidencia de la República

Miriam Valdés Abreu (Cuba)


Directora de Análisis, Oficina para la Informatización.

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