Today Norway, tomorrow - Ultima Thule!

June 28, 2005 6:05 AM

Norway's Ministry for Modernisation has declared for Open Source formats.Speaking at eNorge, the Norwegian Minister for Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has said that "proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government". Although he did not mention Microsoft by name, he did say that this was the last time he would be streaming his speech using the current (WMP-based) technology.

The Ministry for Modernisation may sound quaint, but it was founded in 2004 with a broad remit, and 200 employees, not a small number in a nation of less than 5 million souls. Although Norway's spending on IT may not be great compared to the US or China, as one of the wealthiest and most technologically developed nations on Earth (not to mention the emphasis on long-distance communications robustness created by a large country with terrible weather) it sets a precedent about what a tech-savvy first-world nation might do with Open Source, not because it cannot afford proprietary formats but because it does not want them. Microsoft, meanwhile, might be wondering why it bothered to translate Office into Sami. Will this be the first domino, or can it be written off as the actions of an oil-rich rogue state that will soon be brought back into the global consensus?
posted by tannhauser (18 comments total)

That's totally awesome. The more governments follow Norway's example, the less likely it is that TGP will succeed.

I'm imagining a future where the US government tries to leverage the world economy with TGP-based protocols, and nobody cares...
posted by baphomet at 6:24 AM on June 28, 2005

Very cool indeed. It's nice to see a country where the government's IT infrastructure isn't decided by backroom deals and other shenanigans.
posted by clevershark at 6:36 AM on June 28, 2005

Whitespace cleanup, isle 43106.
posted by odinsdream at 6:53 AM on June 28, 2005

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_
posted by matteo at 6:55 AM on June 28, 2005

baphomet: TGP? The only TGP I'm aware of is Thumbnail Gallery Post, and I don't think you were talking about pr0n.
posted by lowlife at 6:56 AM on June 28, 2005

Toad Granularity Pileup. Duh.
posted by redteam at 7:36 AM on June 28, 2005

I have no idea what this means, but anything that works towards returning Windows Media to the fiery hellpit from whence it came, I'll support it 100%.
posted by fungible at 7:42 AM on June 28, 2005

'Your search - "tgp-based protocols" - did not match any documents.'

I think you mean so-called "trusted computing" or a variant thereof.
posted by clevershark at 7:43 AM on June 28, 2005

lowlife writes "TGP? The only TGP I'm aware of is Thumbnail Gallery Post, and I don't think you were talking about pr0n"

That's because you don't live in a country where the winter night lasts for depressing six months every year - if you did you would be able to fully appreciate the importance of TGP-based protocols.
posted by nkyad at 7:57 AM on June 28, 2005

eNorge

*groans*

a nation of less than 5 million souls

Yeah, but how many Norwegians?

created by a large country

I thougth we were talking about Norway?

But seriously, this is good news. I hope more governments follow Norway's lead.
posted by spazzm at 9:40 AM on June 28, 2005

Sorri aobut teh spelign
posted by spazzm at 9:46 AM on June 28, 2005

I'd have to go with oil-rich rogue state, but I don't think they'll be brought back. If the transition goes well, other countries might follow suit, especially other nordic countries, since good and sometimes bad ideas tend to be copied by the other countries and there's also a shared mentality of open government.
posted by lazy-ville at 10:04 AM on June 28, 2005

I have to ask. Matteo, was that a highly abstract slap on the wrist for using a hyphen rather than an en dash in the title text of this post? I really hope so, as that would mean I had found my promised wife. Although my true bride would have noted the misuse of "less than" also.

Back on topic, it's interesting that you can use, for example, OpenOffice to read Word documents pretty easily, so other nations could probably continue to send their proprietary formats to Norway without too much fuss - Meyer is talking about communication between government and citizens.

Where things get a bit odd is that Norway's schools are largely using Microsoft Office, after Microsoft bowed to pressure and released an edition that recognised NyNorsk, Norway's alternate official language - will that now be phased out?

And on porn surfing - if you're going to surf for porn at work, there are worse places to do it.
posted by tannhauser at 10:11 AM on June 28, 2005

From tannhauser's link:

The former Conoco Phillips employees - given the heave-ho from their posts on the Ekofisk oilfield in 2002 after being caught red-handed while perusing online adult entertainment

Surely they were caught one-handed?
posted by clevershark at 10:45 AM on June 28, 2005

That article is a bit confusing - are they switching to open formats or open-source software? For instance HTML is an open format, but DreamWeaver isn't open-source. Either way, it's a step in the right direction and I can only hope it serves as an example to other governments. I don't really know if I'd consider them to be leading the way in this arena, though - South America has been involved for a while now. In Venezeula the government is under obligation to switch all government PCs to open-source by 2007. Brazil uses open-source heavily in both government and the private sector and nearly half of the businesses in Aregentina run Linux. In Chile there are plans to install 10,000 computers running linux in the schools. Peru is confusing.
posted by nTeleKy at 2:04 PM on June 28, 2005

Sorry, I thought TGP was the current acronym for TCPA/trusted computing...no more acronyms before coffee.
posted by baphomet at 3:41 PM on June 28, 2005

Microsoft to adopt XML as the file format for Office applications. Given the relatively short timetable I imagine they'll be using this to argue their case to Norway.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:23 PM on June 28, 2005

nTeleKy, open protocols and file formats are perhaps more important than open source software.

I certainly don't care what server or word processor is being used on the other end, as long as I don't have to install Outlook or IE or Word to read the document.

It's less important that open source be the dominant software development method than it be allowed to exist (and perhaps thrive).
posted by cytherea at 7:53 PM on June 28, 2005