The Dutch Standardisation Forum (Forum Standaardisatie) has recently described their collection of open standards from the „comply or explain“-list („Pas Toe of Leg Uit“-standaarden) with the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) in RDF. The descriptions are now available through the catalogue of interoperability assets on Joinup.
The goal of the Dutch government’s policy on open standards is to promote interoperability in the Dutch public and semi-public sectors, while at the same time ensuring vendor independence. In order to attain this goal, the Standardisation Forum and Board were established in 2006. The Forum consists of representatives from the government, private sector and scientists. It advises the Board, consisting of 16 high-placed officials from different governmental organisations, on how open standards can enhance information exchange between public administrations.
The Forum maintains the following two lists of open standards:
- List of open standards for which a ‘Comply or Explain’-regime is in place
- List of recommended common open standards
The list of ‘Comply or Explain’-standards has now been described with ADMS RDF and is available through a federated repository on Joinup.
Contrary to the list of recommended common open standards, where the use of the included standards is not mandatory, standards included in the 'Comply or Explain'-list have to be considered in the procurement process of all government and semi-government bodies.
When these bodies procure an ICT service or product, they are required to choose one of the applicable open standards from the 'Comply or Explain' list (‘comply’). Only if this leads to insurmountable problems, may an organisation choose otherwise. However, in this case the annual report of budget spending of the (semi-)public administration must give account of why the different choice was made ('explain'). The 'Comply or Explain' policy is embedded in decrees and government agreements.
To know more
- Standardisation Board and Forum
- List of “apply or explain”-standards – Dutch
- List of recommended standards – Dutch
- Dutch Standardisation Forum - "Comply or explain"-standards – Federated repository on Joinup
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