Grant Thomas, Chief Operating Officer, Standards New Zealand says, “to prepare for the meeting, Standards New Zealand formed an advisory group and then selected three people to attend the meeting – two delegates from the group and a Standards New Zealand General Manager.

“The meeting was an opportunity for the delegations to discuss proposed resolutions to problems raised by countries that voted against the specification. Our advisory group played a crucial role in proposing resolutions to the major concerns for New Zealand.”

In 2007 Standards New Zealand voted against adoption the specification because of stakeholder concerns about technical omissions, errors and inconsistencies within the draft Standard as well as interoperability and intellectual property issues.

With the meeting focusing on the most important issues raised by each country New Zealand's delegation was successful in getting their proposed resolutions adopted for two key areas of concern for New Zealand.

“New Zealand proposed significant changes to improve accessibility for the disabled, and also changes to the specification relating to web browser compatibility to ensure compatibility with browsers such as Firefox and Safari, both these proposals were accepted and this was a big win for New Zealand,” says Mr Thomas.

Standards New Zealand now has until the end of March to determine whether to vote for the document to become an international Standard. As part of the decision making process Standards New Zealand will be consulting extensively with the advisory group to determine whether their previous concerns have been adequately addressed. This will enable Standards New Zealand to reach a decision that best reflects the views of key New Zealand Stakeholders. This decision will be made on 27 March 2008.

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 is a proposed standard for word-processing documents, presentations and spreadsheets that is intended to be implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms. According to the submitters of the document, one of its objectives is to ensure the long-term preservation of documents created over the last two decades using programmes that are becoming incompatible with continuing advances in the field of information technology.

For more information please contact: Grant Thomas, mobile +64 21 744 991, email grant.thomas@standards.co.nz