An interesting release sent to me today by my colleague Sandy Britain. Having discussed the issue of open source and open standards at length during our trip to Alt-i-lab together, it is interesting to note here a whole nation that has decided to pursue an open standards approach at a government level.

Titled Proprietary Formats No Longer Acceptable in Communication with Government , the release quotes the Norwegian Minister for Modernisation who describes his new plan for information technology in Norway which states that by the end of 2006 every body of the public sector in Norway must have in place a plan for the use of open source code and open standards

The Norwegian Information Technology Plan ?? ??eNorge 2009 ?? the digital leap” – calls for a massive restructuring of Public sector in Norway where digital communication between every citizen and government will become the norm. Part of the plan is to provide every citizen with their own “home page” for communication with government and for opening services 24/7 to the public. In the process every Norwegian citizen will be provided with a personal electronic ID as a replacement for the numerous user-ids and passwords currently used throughout.

This is an ambitious plan – I will look forward with interest to seeing how it develops. Perhaps there’s something we can learn from the approach down here in the antipodes!