This policy and its principles refer to the Government in its roles as a purchaser of IT
and to services delivered by, for, or on behalf of central government departments,
their agencies, non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) and any other bodies for
which they are responsible.
We recognise, however, that most public bodies deliver services through IT enabled
projects, many of which need to work across organisational boundaries.
Consequently whilst this policy focusses on central government, we shall work to
promote the open standards principles for software interoperability, data and
document formats with all public bodies in the UK. Local government, the wider
public sector and the Devolved Administrations are encouraged to adopt the
principles to deliver wider benefits.
These principles relate to open standards for software interoperability, data and
document formats as depicted in figure 1.