Dutch campaign for mandatory use of open standards in education

[Jan Stedehouder]

Good evening,

First off, I'd like to thank your for taking the time to read this request.
In short, two weeks ago I wrote a column about the use of Silverlight in
education, which became a campaign to make the use of open standards in
Dutch education mandatory. Support for the campaign is growing and frankly,
I need help to build an organization and campaign than achieve it's goals.

The longer version is that I have been writing about FOSS since 2006/2007,
as author of various books [1], as a journalist for the Dutch newssite Livre
[2] and currently Open Trends [3] and as a columnist. In that last role I
was highly critical of the Dutch open standards and open source policy as I
felt that the ambitious policy wasn't executed properly. Apart from writing
I run around giving presentations and workshops about (migration to) FOSS
and digital literacy. Currently my main focus is to promote a secure,
sustainable and independent access to one's digital data. Thus, when I
(again) heard about students having problems with their online educational
environments due to the use of Silverlight I wrote a column about it [4].

The response was very positive, so I decided to write an open letter to
Dutch parliament [5] and then to launch a petition so others could express
their support[6]. Last week the initiative hit the frontpage of Slashdot[7]
and with it, international support[8]. Two days ago, two parliament members
(GroenLinks, Green Party), asked the government to respond to the open
letter and the petition, and to give an explanation why the use of open
standards in the public sector is lagging behind so much[9]. I've provided
summaries in English here [8] en here [10].

What are our goals? In the open letter and petition I asked parliament and
government to take four measures:

1. to strengthen the Dutch action plan Netherlands Open in Connection by
making the use of open standards truly mandatory for all publicly-funded
institutions, in harmony with the comply-or-explain principle;

2. to make platform-independent access to all online services and
information mandatory for all publicly-funded institutions, in this case,
educational institutions;

3. to put an end to teaching limited productspecific skill-sets by
educational institutions; and

4. to put an end to the practice of selling software to teachers, parents
and students (via a limited numbers of educational resellers) against prices
that are extremely below current market prices.

Since then it has become clear that points 3 and 4 don't have a strong
backing, also not in the FOSS communities. For this reason I already decided
to focus primarily on points 1 and 2 (and offer a separate petition with
only these two points [11]). We are getting to close to 800 signatures for
the various petitions, though some still need to be verified.

To have this topic on the political agenda in two weeks time is already
amazing and it shows its potential. I received e-mails indicating there are
similar issues in Belgium, Norway and Australia.

Getting it on the political agenda is one thing. To ensure it turns into
strong policy measures is something else. And it is something I can not do
alone. A few people have offered some help already, but we really need to
have an infrastructure for a campaign that might last a few months, that can
broaden support for our goals among students, parents and teachers, that can
compile a blackbook of students that got into trouble for not being able to
use Silverlight (and were forced to buy and use a proprietary OS), that can
compile a whitepaper of best practices and available tools that comply with
the two main points (open standards, platformindependent access) and can
work with parliament to push for the needed legislation. I believe there is
a possibility, perhaps a need, to scale this campaign to a European level.

When I started thinking about which organization I can turn to that
understands the issue, that knows how to execute an activist campaign and
can scale up to a European level, well, there was only one that came to mind
:-) . I spoke to Mark Lamers and he suggested to write this -far too long-
piece for this mailing list.

What do we need? I've mentioned a few of the larger tasks ahead, but no
doubt there is a lot I haven't even considered. I am still transforming from
a lone writer with an itch and a computer to a campaigner.

Thank your for patience and attention.

Kindest regards,


Jan Stedehouder


[1] http://www.janstedehouder.nl/mijn-boeken/
[2] http://www.archieflivre.nl/
[3] http://www.opentrends.nl/
[4]
http://www.janstedehouder.nl/2011/09/22/overgewicht-in-de-nederlandse-onderwijs-ict/
[5]
http://www.janstedehouder.nl/2011/09/26/open-brief-buitensluiting-van-5-10-van-de-leerlingen-van-online-schoolomgevingen/
[6]
http://www.janstedehouder.nl/2011/09/27/petitie-weg-met-het-overgewicht-in-nederlandse-onderwijs-ict/
[7]
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/01/0013203/Battle-For-Open-Standards-In-Dutch-Public-Education
[8]
http://www.janstedehouder.nl/2011/09/28/make-the-use-of-open-standards-in-education-mandatory/
[9]
http://www.janstedehouder.nl/2011/10/05/kamervragen-over-petitie-open-standaarden-in-het-onderwijs/
[10]
http://www.janstedehouder.nl/2011/09/28/make-the-use-of-open-standards-in-education-mandatory/
[11]
http://www.janstedehouder.nl/2011/09/28/petitie-weg-met-het-overgewicht-in-nederlandse-onderwijs-ict-variant/
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