Open Standards and Government Policy

The fast growth in globalization stimulates the trend of open standards and challenges governments in devising policies for the national information infrastructures to foster equal access to and even distribution of knowledge among citizens and business. In response, governments may seek a more active role in standardization as they face challenges from being stakeholders in use of standards; a need for new standards may drive governments to become participants in the standardization process, and to require conformance assurance by the market, and search for a policy on migration from an installed base of proprietary solutions. In this chapter the authors identify some critical issues, which can help government decision makers opt for select positions and interventions in standardization.