An article on Newsforge points to a very significant determination by the European Union which seems currently to be leading the world in creating a future framework for the use of software and standards in government.

Here's a crucial quote from the end of the article:

To attain interoperability in the context of pan-European eGovernment services, guidance needs to focus on open standards. The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an open standard:

• The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
• The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
• The intellectual property (i.e. patents possibly present) of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
• There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

The EC document goes on to suggest a strong link between open source and open standards. In particular, it says that "OSS products are, by their nature, publicly available specifications, and the availability of their source code promotes open, democratic debate around the specifications, making them both more robust and interoperable. As such, OSS corresponds to the objectives of this Framework and should be assessed and considered favourably alongside proprietary alternatives."

The article can be read in its entirety on Newsforge.