Japan To Adopt Open Software Standards

em8chel writes "Japan has adopted a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards. Japan thus becomes the first country in Asia to embrace open software standards (PDF), the OpenDocument Format Alliance says in a press release. ODF managing director Marino Marcich is quoted: 'By giving preference to open software formats such as ODF, it is saying that information should be competitively priced, innovative, and easily available to the widest range of people, now and in the future. We hail Japan for its diligence and vision.' The new guidelines are available (in Japanese) from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry."

Comments

Interoperability say it all

[UncleWilly]

The ODF alliance press release aside, interoperability is the last mile in lots of "IT Plans Gone Bad", as plot-point-two. Japan seems to make a lot of smart decisions. Guess I'm just a little jealous.

Open Source and Growing Up Mormon

[WED Fan]

Everytime I see a /. article "X Chooses Open Source", "Country Y Goes Linux", "Province B Going MS Free", I'm reminded of some of my Mormon friends.

Everytime some celebrity converted, they crowed about how their church was gaining ground and would encompass the world.

Everytime some new temple complex was found in Central or South America, they'd claim it was evidence of Nephite civilization.

Everytime there was a "gentile" event that paid homage to the Mormons, they go into theological orgasms.

The facts are: For every 4 converts, 3 stop going to church within a year. There still is no proof of Nephites. Yes, Mitt Romney is Mormon, but so is Harry Reid, and both just look like slimy used car salesmen.

Partial translation of the Japanese document

[mattr]

Hello, I would like to mention some points from the Japanese PDF.

First of all, Japan has some very strict new laws on how corporations must handle personal information of individuals to protect their privacy. Along with the changes in the Corporation Law recently, these laws mean that virtually all major corporations in Japan have been rewriting their articles of incorporation, employee manuals, IT department guidelines, and so on. It doesn't mean things are more secure, but it does mean they are supposed to be more secure. IIRC if your company handles the personal information on more than 500 people then you have to implement certain procedures. (Anyway I am not attempting to provide authoritative information here.)

There also have been a number of scandals (mainly at big banks) on customer information being leaked. So now all corporations' fundamental articles include words like "leakage" and "falsification" of information as things that must be prevented. Japanese companies usually have their fiscal year begin April 1 which means that just a couple weeks ago, most corporations had their general shareholders meetings (many on the same day, to avoid organized crime from interfering) where things like this got voted on (if they weren't the previous year). ODF and standards haven't been on the plate but maybe they will be next year with this announcement.

Okay, on to the PDF. The PDF includes definitions of many terms including "vendor lockin", "open standards", etc. ODF and XML are mentioned by name. It seems to be well written (though I have not read the whole thing). It would seem to exclude allowing Microsoft's horrible new format as an open format because it mentions in the vendor lockin definition the nonavailability of an API, or the limitation on ability to implement it due to licensing requirements. IANAL but it would seem that the government has the leeway to make sane judgements, even in the case of for example Microsoft taking over the standards process and making OOXML an international standard. That said, Japan is probably Microsoft's best or second best market.

The document also states clearly that open formats are to be preferred, and must be used to promote exchange of information between ministries. The word "saiyou" (adopt, use) is used in the statements that say software that adopts open standards is desirable. It is not clear that this forbids the software to also support closed formats, but the spirit of the document would seem to prefer fully open software/solutions so that data may not be saved in closed formats, as this would hamper free exchange of information and the ability to store/view the documents into perpetuity.

Here is a translation of section 4.2.3 on page 19. I, Matthew Rosin, hereby release this translated text to the world in the public domain but deny responsibility for any mistakes.

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4.2.3. Policy related to giving priority to open standards

It is desirable for the government and public organizations to secure the mutual interoperability of information systems between administrative organizations and with related private sector and international organizations, in order to pursue efficient administration and to provide highly convenient service. To this end, it is necessary to procure software for which protocols, APIs, etc. that use interfaces that are compatible with open standards, to the extent to which implementation is possible.

The government and public organizations, in order to secure transparency related to policy, fulfill their responsibility for providing explanations, and realize expanded participation by the citizenry, software must be procured, to the extent to which implementation is possible, for which the formats of data and files are compatible with open standards, in order to guarantee for public documents the ease of access and ability to save and browse over the long term.

Mutual interconnection between related organizations, including governmental organs, and the free exchange of data among