Possible challenges when governments adopts open standards

In line with their national IT policies favouring open standards, many government IT software procurement policies have specified that products and solutions should support and implement open standards before they can be considered. However, there are several challenges to overcome if this is to be put into practice. The reality is that, sometimes, open standards may not be available or are not mature enough for a required technology. Also, in some cases, the usage of a de facto standard is so entrenched that it is not practical to ignore it.

One way to overcome some of the problems highlighted above is to recommend, in cases where open standards are either not available or mature enough, some other specification (e.g., a de facto standard) for use in the meantime. This interim specification should be chosen with care. It should be one that is widely used and, as far as possible, the specification should be publicly published and available for implementation so that software that can support it is available from different sources or vendors. Examples of these include the zip data compression file format and the PDF format for office documents and brochures