Open Parliament
Sign the PetitionWe believe that the current situation, where the European Parliament’s ICT runs on proprietary operating systems and on software that is not interoperable with that of other vendors, where therefore citizens and stakeholder groups wishing to participate in the legislative process are forced to use the products of a single company, is in conflict with the first article of Chapter 1 in the Treaty of the European Union, which stipulates that “…decisions are taken with the greatest possible respect for openness and as near as possible to the citizens.”
A clear and simple example of this is the live web streaming from the European Parliament’s plenary sessions, a service aimed at improving insight into the democratic process, which is currently only available to those using Microsoft’s MediaPlayer. We have also understood that Members of the European Parliament are unable to access documents sent to them in formats adhering to Open Standards, including the ISO standard for electronic office documents, the Open Document Format (ODF) - the primary format for an ecosystem of office productivity applications.
This is not about Microsoft or Windows being good or evil. This petition is about choice. If anyone likes to work with Windows, Office or whatever, that's fine with me. But please let me use the operating system or programs I like to choose. There are open standards that should ensure interoperability and their usage should be enforced in the government - .doc is not one of them.
A clear and simple example of this is the live web streaming from the European Parliament’s plenary sessions, a service aimed at improving insight into the democratic process, which is currently only available to those using Microsoft’s MediaPlayer. We have also understood that Members of the European Parliament are unable to access documents sent to them in formats adhering to Open Standards, including the ISO standard for electronic office documents, the Open Document Format (ODF) - the primary format for an ecosystem of office productivity applications.
This is not about Microsoft or Windows being good or evil. This petition is about choice. If anyone likes to work with Windows, Office or whatever, that's fine with me. But please let me use the operating system or programs I like to choose. There are open standards that should ensure interoperability and their usage should be enforced in the government - .doc is not one of them.