web sounds:
GO NORWAY!
2005-07-02
"Proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government."- Morten Andreas Meyer, Norwegian Minister of Modernization
After her speech urging people to influence the information society at GUADEC last year in Kristiansand, Eva Hildrum, Director General at the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications, heard an earful about the government's use of proprietary standards from Norwegian members of the audience.
Ms. Hildrum's keynote was followed by a roundtable called Defining Open Standards moderated by Bob Stack, who was instrumental in implementing the open standards policy in Massachusetts while he was Chief Technology Officer for the state. The session, arranged by Danish FLOSS advocate Anne Østergaard, included Bruce Perens (USA), Brahim Souabi (NL), Egon Troles (DE), Vemund Riiser (NO) & Thomas Myrup Kristensen (DK) and contributed to the discussion of open standards in Norway.
It is always encouraging to hear follow-up reports from countries that have hosted a GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. Norway's new digital government framework calls for open standards and government agency plans for open source software. The plan (Norwegian PDF) is called e-Norge 2009. Chalk another one up for free information access and technology.