In an effort to promote open standards and open-source technology in the UK, the National Open Centre (NOC) launched this week.

The NOC was set up by organisations including the National Computing Centre (NCC), UCE Birmingham and Birmingham City Council to develop policy and foster innovation around open standards and open-source use.

A key objective of the NOC is to ensure that information about open-source technology is readily available and widely promoted. To support this aim, the organisation will host a web site www.nationalopencentre.org.uk and a series of events coordinated out of its Birmingham headquarters.

Speaking at the NOC launch event, Dr Barbara Held of the European Commission’s IDABC group, which promotes the use of IT for public-sector services across Europe, said that information sharing is key to promoting open-source technology. “The more people know about open-source, the more they’re likely to implement it. You need a point where the knowledge is stored and available from, and the NOC offers that,” she argued.

Held, who is a member of the NOC advisory panel, added that open-source technology offered a great deal of potential for cross-border initiatives and interaction between governments, administrations and businesses. “It avoids vendor lock-in and offers freedom of choice,” she said.

Open-source projects are starting to be implemented at a European level, according to Held. “Five years ago, open-source in government was about best practice and dissemination of information, but now we’re getting involved in projects,” she explained. “For the first time recently, the Commission released software under the open-source European Union Public Licence, a first step of many.”

Also speaking at the event, Ed Downs, research manager at the NCC, said that the NOC would help the UK keep up to speed with open-source developments. “Many European countries already have national centres, and at many European events the UK is under-represented,” he explained.

Downs added that the NOC was looking for representatives to sit on advisory committee sub-groups to discuss the most important open-source and open standards topics. Sun Microsystems and Adobe were among the IT vendors attending the launch.

The NOC had its first advisory board meeting at the start of February and intends to meet three times a year going forwards.