Help Writing an Open Standards Policy?

Cornwallis writes "I'm trying to save money for a local government agency I work for by writing a policy statement to support the idea of adopting open data standards and/or Open Source software in order to contain IT expenses (by reducing licensing costs). I am thinking something along the lines of supporting open standards by not locking in to long term software contracts so that departments could be freed to adopt an alternative OS and/or desktop suite if this would work for the individual department. The idea is to unlock the stranglehold that proprietary software may have on the department IT budget. Have any of you written policy statements along these lines, and would you be willing to share? I'm not saying this would be for everybody, nor replace everything, just be an option to help my beleaguered agency in rough times."

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[alain94040]

You can use any of a number of already existing policies. For instance, the Open Standards Policy of Massachusetts is very nicely worded:

Commonwealth's Position

• Effective and efficient government service delivery requires system integration and data sharing.
• Technology investments must be made based on total cost of ownership and best value to the Commonwealth. Component-based software development based on open standards allows for a more cost-effective "build once, use many times" approach.
• Open systems and specifications are often less costly to acquire, develop and maintain and do not result in vendor lock-in.

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