Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Perry Kaande
15 April 2008
Harare — The adoption of an international standard "ISO IEC 29500: Office Open XML file format" for the local information technology sector will have to wait a bit longer as the Standards Association of Zimbabwe opted to abstain in a recent electronic ballot.
SAZ standards development and information manager, Ms Romana Marunda told Herald Business that the country abstained because of a lack of consensus within the local IT industry. "Zimbabwe through its national standards body SAZ, submitted an abstention vote. The reason for the abstention vote was because we did not have a common position within the national stakeholders.
"Consultation and consensus within the stakeholders is key to the standards development process," she said.
According to an European Computer Manufacturers Association fact sheet on the standard, "Office open XML (Open XML) is an open standard forward-processing documents, presentations and spreadsheets that can be freely implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms".
A total of 32 participating member countries cast their vote and of these 24 or 75 percent voted in favour of the standard.
Eight African countries, namely Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia and Zimbabwe voted. Of the African countries only Kenya and South Africa are participating members and so their votes were weighted in the final results. Kenya submitted an abstention, whilst South Africa voted against the standard.
Locally, Ms Marunda said the ICT sector is forging ahead in developing homegrown standards albeit with a global perspective.
"It is a global industry and is mainly driven by international standards.
Standards can be developed to solve specific issues at national level and to provide home grown solutions.
SAZ's main role is the facilitation of the development of national standards and is more than willing to develop homegrown IT standards were appropriate".
She added that the World Trade Organisation Barriers to Trade Agreement, of which Zimbabwe is signatory encourages members to adopt international standards as national standards to ensure that they do not create unnecessary barriers to trade.
In February, a representative of Microsoft conducted a workshop in Harare to analyse the importance of interoperability of IT formats in order to enable Zimbabwean organisations (whether public or private) to choose the most suitable application for their needs.
Interoperability would also foster opportunities for Zimbabwean IT developers to innovate and create locally relevant programmes and gain recognition for their work. SAZ has been a member of the International Organisation for Standardisation since 1991.
The Association has also been a member of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Country Affiliate programme since 2001.
IEC is responsible for publishing international standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies, which are not covered by ISO.
SAZ by virtue of its memberships in these bodies can participate in the development of relevant international standards.
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