We need your help to set standards for software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT.
These will follow open standards principles and will be applied across government to make services better for users and cheaper to run. Get involved in any of the 4 stages of the process for determining the adopted standards.
We need you to suggest areas where users of government services face problems that might be solved by open standards. We'll assess suggestions as they come in, look at their possible benefits and read other users’ comments on them.
visit the issues page where you can...
- read and comment other people’s suggestions
- make a suggestion
A panel of technology experts will choose some suggestions to become challenges and appoint a challenge owner to act as a champion for each. We’ll publish those here so users can respond to them by recommending standards or approaches that might solve them.
- read current challenges other people’s responses
- make or comment a response (offer a solution)
The challenge owner will evaluate responses and draw on them to create proposals for solving each challenge. You can comment on these proposals, which will help the challenge owner and open standards community to assess them and identify one that they will submit to the Open Standards Board for approval.
Become a challenge owner.
The Open Standards Board will review the proposal and decide whether its approach to solving a challenge and the open standard or collection of standards involved should be adopted across government.
You can read "How open standards are selected" for the full details.
GOV.UK maintains a list of compulsory and recommended standards
The Open Standards Board is made up of Board members who are appointed. They are expert users and drawn from government and not-for-profit organisations as well as volunteers from academia and industry.
The board has specific Terms of Reference that all board members must abide by.
We maintain an archive of minutes from previous meetings.
The most recent minutes are available here on the Open Standards Board GOV.UK page