馬來西亞支持開放標準

Malaysian Government Supports Open Standards

Kuala Lumpur, 10 August 2007 -- The Malaysian government today announced its plan to move to greater choice and competition among office application providers that support open standards, in particular, the OpenDocument Format (ODF). This means that the Government will have a plan to end its reliance on vendors that use only proprietary file formats while promoting local industry in its move to openness.

MAMPU (Malaysian Administration Modernisation and Management Planning Unit) last week issued a tender for a nine-month study on the usage of open standards in its information communications technology (ICT), and how to migrate the Malaysian public sector to open standards and ODF.

"The decision taken has been deliberated carefully for a considerable amount of time and much thought process has been put into it. These discussions centered on open formats, particularly as they relate to office documents, their importance for the current and future accessibility of government records, and the relative 'openness' of the format options available to us," said Dr. Nor Aliah Mohd. Zahri, Deputy Director General (ICT), MAMPU.

The study willl document the benefits of open standards, suggest policies and guidelines for achieving openness and provide a road map for implementing ODF in the public sector.

Open standards are those technical specifications in a format that has been approved by international standards bodies with transparent processes, and broad, diverse membership open to meaningful input by all participants and are implemented widely by multiple interoperable offerings. The only such format today is ODF, which enjoys the imprimatur of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the 'United Nations' of standards bodies.

Besides Malaysia, other countries that have adopted pro-ODF policies include Japan, Belgium, Norway, France, Denmark, Brazil, Poland and Croatia.