Vancouver endorses open standards

THE CITY COUNCIL of Vancouver in (once-) British Columbia has embraced open standards to make its data more widely accessible and says it will consider open source software on equal footing with proprietary software products when making public acquisitions.

Councillor Andrea Reimer said, "The local online community was all very, very happy, and now we just have to look forward on implementation and figuring sort of the order with which we do that."

Reimer had proposed the motion, which passed last Thursday. She argued that taxpayers have already paid for the data to be collected and that the change would improve city government transparency, cut costs and empower people to use city data to develop new software applications, including commercial products.

About 15 members of the public addressed the council on the motion, with all speaking in favour of it.

Reimer said, "The only sort of negative [reaction] was 'Can't you go further? Can't you do more?'" She also said some who spoke to the council felt open source software should be preferred, not merely considered equally with proprietary software.

City staff were said to be excited about the new policy, as they had tried to adopt more open standards in the past but were hampered by lack of policy guidance. Staff should develop implementation plans by Autumn, but Reimer said she believes some changes will begin immediately.

There's no word yet as to whether Microsoft will lobby US Homeland Security to close the Canadian border. µ

L'Inq
CBC