Dad's organization (OFE) are organizing a petition to convince the European Parliament Government to change their IT systems over to using open standards.
Head over to www.openparliament.eu to sign up and show your support
Citizens and stakeholder groups should not have to use the software of a single company in order to communicate with their elected officials or participate in the legislative process.
All companies should be given the chance to compete freely for contracts to supply ICT services to the European Parliament.
I am a citizen of the EU, and I want the European Parliament to adopt the use of open standards and to promote interoperability in the ICT sector.
We believe that the current situation, where the European Parliament’s ICT runs on proprietary 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. An example of this is the live Web streaming from the European Parliament's plenary sessions – aimed at improving communication with citizens and insight into democratic processes – which will only work with Windows Media Player.
Go on, head over and sign the petition.
