Open Standards Requirement¶
About this policy
These policies require government institutions to adopt open technical standards to ensure interoperability, vendor neutrality, and long-term accessibility.
What we include
This section includes laws, strategies, and implementation frameworks that mandate or promote the use of open, non-proprietary, and interoperable standards in government software, data exchange, and digital services.
🌍 Policies¶
🇧🇷 Brazil¶
- 🔗 Law Nº 14.129/2021
- 📄 Overview:
Law Nº 14.129/2021 mandates the use of open and non-proprietary formats in government digital services, reinforcing open standards as a legal requirement. Article 3, item XXV, and the definitions in Article 4 emphasize that government systems must adopt open, documented, and patent-free technologies to ensure interoperability and accessibility. These provisions support the broader goal of efficient and transparent digital governance.
🇨🇦 Canada¶
- 🔗 Open Standards section – Open Resource Exchange
- 📄 Overview:
The Open Standards section of the Open Resource Exchange supports the Government of Canada’s mandate to use open standards where possible, as outlined in the Directive on Service and Digital. It provides a centralized catalog of open standards including formats, protocols, and APIs that ensure interoperability across government systems. Public administrations are encouraged to adopt, search, and contribute to this shared repository to support digital openness, technical compatibility, and long-term sustainability.
🇪🇨 Ecuador¶
- 🔗 Executive Decree No. 1014
- 📄 Overview:
Executive Decree No. 1014 promotes the use of open standards in Ecuador’s Central Public Administration as part of its broader mandate to adopt free and open-source software. The decree references the Ibero-American Charter on Electronic Government, which encourages open standards to ensure interoperability. This framing supports a policy environment where government systems are expected to prioritize openness and compatibility.
🇪🇪 Estonia¶
- 🔗 Estonia’s Digital Agenda 2030
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📄 Overview:
Estonia’s Digital Agenda 2030 establishes its open standards policy as a core tenet for all digital development. In the "Principles" section, the agenda outlines a technology-neutral approach that, whenever possible, gives preference to open standards and solutions built upon them. This guiding principle aims to ensure interoperability and openness in government systems. The commitment is reinforced by planned activities elsewhere in the document, such as ensuring the compatibility of the digital government with the European interoperability framework, a goal mentioned in the section on "Future-proof digital government platforms," and promoting cross-border interoperability through international cooperation.
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🔗 Interoperability Framework of the State Information System
- 📄 Overview:
The "Interoperability Framework of the State Information System" establishes a mandate for using open standards to ensure technical interoperability and openness across the public sector. This policy is detailed in Chapter 5 ("Open standards") and supported by principles in sections 2.9 ("Openness") and 2.11 ("Technology neutrality"). The framework requires that public sector system interfaces must be created in a technology-neutral manner using prescribed open standards like XML, WSDL, and SOAP. A core component of this policy, outlined in Chapter 5, is the compulsory adherence to an agreed minimum set of open standards for public administration. Furthermore, Requirement 2.33 mandates that any decision to use closed standards or specifications must be explicitly justified, reinforcing the preference for open solutions.
🇫🇷 France¶
- 🔗 Law for a Digital Republic
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📄 Overview:
The 2016 Law for a Digital Republic institutes a strong policy for open standards within the French public sector. Article 3 mandates that any administrative document or data published electronically must be in an open, easily reusable, and machine-readable standard. Reinforcing this principle, Article 16 further encourages administrations to use open formats across the entire lifecycle of their information systems, including development, procurement, and daily operation, to foster interoperability.
- 📄 Overview:
The RGI, France’s General Interoperability Framework, mandates the use of open and widely recognized technical standards such as ISO, W3C, and OGC for public sector IT systems. Approved by decree, it ensures interoperability, promotes vendor neutrality, and supports the integration of open-source solutions in government services.
🇩🇪 Germany¶
- 🔗 Digital Strategy
- 📄 Overview:
Germany's Digital Strategy mandates the use of open standards for government systems, as outlined in Section 4.3, "Lernender, digitaler Staat" (Learning, Digital State). This policy is positioned as a fundamental requirement for enhancing the digital sovereignty of the public administration. The strategy links the mandatory adoption of open standards and interfaces to ensuring interoperability and minimizing dependencies on specific technology providers.
🇮🇹 Italy¶
- 🔗 Guidelines on the acquisition and reuse of software for public administrations
- 📄 Overview:
This policy promotes the contribution of improvements back to the original open-source projects. As detailed in Section 3.9.2 and the associated Annex D, when a public administration modifies reusable or third-party open source software, it is strongly encouraged to propose these changes, such as bug fixes or new features, to the upstream project. This collaborative approach, also supported by the coordination principles in Section 3.8.3, aims to consolidate value into the main codebase. Regardless of whether the upstream contribution is accepted, the administration remains obligated under Article 69 to release its modified version publicly.
🇰🇷 South Korea¶
- 🔗 eGovFrame (Electronic Government Standard Framework)
- 📄 Overview:
eGovFrame is an open-source framework developed by the Korean government to standardize and facilitate software reuse across public sector IT systems. Maintained by the National Information Society Agency, it provides shared infrastructure and components to improve interoperability, avoid redundant development, and reduce vendor lock-in. Its open distribution supports both domestic and global reuse, advancing a national policy of interagency software transfer and reuse.
🇨🇭 Switzerland¶
- 🔗 Federal Act on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfilment of Official Duties (EMBAG)
- 📄 Overview:
According to Article 12, the Federal Chancellery can declare technical, organizational, and procedural standards as binding for federal authorities to support system interoperability. The policy explicitly states a preference for internationally established open standards, which must also be considered during procurement processes to ensure compatibility across government systems.
🇪🇸 Spain¶
- 🔗 Royal Decree 4/2010 on the National Interoperability Framework
- 📄 Overview:
Royal Decree 4/2010 includes clear provisions for the adoption of open standards within Spain’s public sector. Article 11 establishes the obligation to use standards that ensure interoperability, preferably those that are open and widely adopted. Annexes I and II detail the criteria for considering a standard as open and define the Common Interoperability Framework, which prioritizes the use of open formats, protocols, and interfaces in public sector ICT systems. These requirements are designed to guarantee long-term accessibility, technological neutrality, and vendor independence across public administrations.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom¶
- 🔗 Open Source, Open Standards and Re‑Use: Government Action Plan)
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📄 Overview:
The Action Plan mandates the use of open standards in government procurement and system development to ensure interoperability and long-term accessibility. As detailed in Action 8 and Policy Section (7), the government commits to specifying open standards in requirements and promoting formats like HTML, Open Document Format, and open versions of previously proprietary standards. Compliance with these standards is required, particularly for websites and public information systems.
- 📄 Overview:
A central requirement of the playbook is the adoption of open standards to ensure system interoperability and vendor neutrality. The key policy on "Open and interoperable data and software," detailed in Chapter 8, mandates that software be designed for platform-agnostic access and that data be shared using consistent methods, primarily through APIs that conform to Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) standards. This commitment is further supported by the Technology Code of Practice (TCoP), referenced in Chapter 3, which guides the creation of interoperable, standards-based services to avoid lock-in.
🇺🇸 United States¶
- 🔗 Federal Source Code Policy (M-16-21)
- 📄 Overview:
Section 3.D requires that all government software procurements and development projects consider using open standards wherever practical. This policy is intended to increase the interoperability of government systems, reduce vendor lock-in, and spur innovation, regardless of whether the final software solution is proprietary, mixed source, or open source in nature.
🇺🇾 Uruguay¶
- 🔗 Law No. 19179: Regulation on Digital Information Formats and Software
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📄 Overview:
Article 1 mandates that all state bodies, including all branches of government and state-owned enterprises, must distribute information in at least one open, standard, and free format. It also requires them to accept information from the public in at least one open and standard format, promoting interoperability.
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📄 Overview:
The AI Governance pillar (page 10) requires the creation of a reference framework for implementing AI in public administration. This framework must include a quality data model built upon an open data standard, establishing the necessary foundation for interoperable and transparent AI systems across government.
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🔗 Decree No. 44/015: Regulation of Law 19.179 on Digital Information and Software
- 📄 Overview:
The decree empowers the national digital government agency, AGESIC, to define and enforce technical standards. Article 4 gives AGESIC the competency to establish the specific open formats and programs that government bodies must use for all digital information exchange, ensuring interoperability.
🇪🇺 European Commission¶
- 🔗 European Commission digital strategy: Next generation digital Commission
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📄 Overview:
The strategy emphasizes interoperability through the use of open standards. On page 5, it explicitly states a preference for using open standards for exchanging information as a principle for achieving digital sovereignty. This is reinforced on page 11 with a commitment to focus on common standards to enable data access and exchange between the Commission and Member States.
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📄 Overview:
The plan establishes "Interoperability by default" as a core principle for all public services (Section 2). To achieve this, it outlines key actions in Section 3.1, including revising the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and developing a European Catalogue of ICT standards for public procurement to ensure digital solutions can work seamlessly across the Single Market.
- 📄 Overview:
To ensure digital sovereignty and interoperability, the "Stay in control" principle in Section 5.6 establishes a policy of promoting open standards and specifications for all future IT developments. The strategy emphasizes that these standards should be implemented and distributed through open source software, embedding this approach into the corporate governance framework.
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