The Danish government last Friday appointed five experts to evaluate the implementation of Open Standards in the country.

Attorney Andrew Updegrove specializes in technology, intellectual property, and standards. While other lawyers can make the same claim, few have his credentials -- maintainer of an online repository about standards consortia, former board member of the Linux Foundation, and progenitor of a major open source license.

A couple of days ago we mentioned concerns in the US about China’s development of its own standards in isolation (i.e. Microsoft style, because great connected minds think alike). Andy Updegrove has posted a link to this good article.

After the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) failed to resolve the differences around Microsoft's proposed OOXML standard, what happens next?

Industry has always depended on standards and traditional industries have built their standards as part of a slow, controlled, top-down approach to innovation. Industrial-age standards are often heavily patented, complex, and large. They can be expensive to implement and therefore are implementable only for large established firms.

The Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS), taking the first step toward developing national IT standards, is inviting experts to join technical committees.

13 members of the TC in Norway has left their Standards Body in protest. They say that the Standards Body has lost its credibility in the IT area. Remember that Standards Norway was voting Yes with the support of only 2 companies (Microsoft and Statoil), and against the will of the rest of the technical committee.

The UK government is shockingly blind to its own attitude towards open standards and Free software

Since I gave a presentation on this topic at the OFE Conference in Geneva at the end of February I have meant to post something about it here. As some of us stated before, if anything, the OOXML debacle has achieved one thing: raising awareness for the need for higher quality standards and standards development processes.