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On 14 December 2006 a Coalition for Open Standards was established by a large group of IT companies and organizations in Poland with a view to promote open technological standards.

The coalition aims at taking measures to ensure freedom of choice for IT solutions for Polish citizens as well as businesses and administration bodies by enforcing open standards for information storage and exchange.

The use of open standards has numerous advantages among which the possibility to freely exchange information, the freedom of choosing the IT tool suppliers, an increased flexibility and interoperability in implementing IT solutions, an increased competitiveness and quality of systems on the Polish market.

The lack of open standards leads to higher costs, closed formats for sharing information requiring the use of specific software.

The Coalition for Open Standards includes companies present on the Polish market, such as Corel, IBM, Macrologic, Novell, Oracle, etc., but also organizations such as Aviary.pl, Internet Society Poland, the Professional Linux Association, the Cities Online Association and the PRO Polish Software Market Association. The new coalition intends to promote open standards through its website, as well as by educational and informational campaigns for the public.

Large interest on open standards has been shown in many EU countries. Thus, on 2 November, the Athens Internet Governance Forum hosted in Athens the Open Standards, Interoperability and Government Procurement event where one recommendation for Governments was to follow the example of countries such as Denmark or Belgium in adopting Open Document Format especially for public records.

During the IGF meeting, a Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards was created. This Dynamic Coalition wants to frame and define the most urgent problems related to open technology standards and application interoperability and suggest straightforward, workable solutions that can be implemented by all stakeholders.

Polish Coalition for Open Standards
http://www.standardy.org

Open standards for information exchange and storage a prerequisite for the information society development (14.12.2006)
http://www.standardy.org/node/31

Promoting Open Standards for the Participation Age (31.10.2006)
http://www.sun.com/2006-1031/int_gov/index.jsp

IGF Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (2.11.2006)
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/igf/athens110206/key_docs.html