[LINK] Make Australian Standards Open Access?

[Tom Worthington]

In my talk for the Canberra Society of Editors I suggested the 
Australian Government make its publications open access using a 
Creative Commons license < 
http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/10/make-australian-government.html>.

The Productivity Commission has reported on the Australian 
Government's relationship with Standards Australia Limited (SA) 
<http://www.pc.gov.au/study/standards/>.

If the Australian Government is willing to consider making its 
documents freely available on-line, it seems reasonable that 
Standards Australia should do likewise. There seems no good reason 
why the resulting documents should not be freely available on-line to 
Australians, who funded the standards development and wrote the 
standards for free.

SA could retain control over the content of the standards and 
continue to licence them commercially. SA floated it publishing arm 
on the Australian Stock exchange as SAI Global Limited some time ago 
<http://www.saiglobal.com/>.

ps: I represent the Australian Computer Society on the Council of 
Standards Australia, but the view expressed above is not necessarily 
that of the ACS.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board   http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml