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New Zealand Votes No; Malaysia Tech Recommends No but It Abstains Anyway: Australia Abstains; India Suggests

By Pamela Jones et al.

More news starting to come in. New Zealand votes No again, and here's why:

Mrs Chin says 'There have been significant improvements to the specification since it was first put forward for voting in September 2007, however there is still insufficient New Zealand stakeholder support for Standards New Zealand to vote for publication as an ISO/IEC international Standard.'

Our role is to ensure that overall New Zealanders will benefit from publication of a particular Standard and in this case it was clear that while some would benefit, there would be others who would be disadvantaged. A major concern is the expected increase in costs for government agencies that would result from the specification being adopted as an ISO/IEC international Standard. Cost increases for government agencies ultimately impact all New Zealanders.'

You cannot believe the pressure put on them to change the vote, but they did not, to their credit. Australia maintains the Abstain vote [PDF], which is better than it could be, considering they asked Rick Jelliffe to go to the BRM as their tech expert, but not as good as voting No. What is needed now is for some to change to a No. Malaysia meanwhile is following a more circuitous route.

Full post as published by Groklaw on March 31, 2008 (boomark / email).