Guidance

Open standards for government

Information about the open standards chosen for use in government technology.

Published 27 September 2013
Last updated 9 August 2022 + show all updates
  1. Updated "Collect, use and exchange beneficial ownership information" to reflect the release of version 0.3.0 of the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS).

  2. Added "Collect, use and exchange beneficial ownership information" and "Record and share information about public services in local authorities" attachments

  3. PDFs on GOV.UK must either become HTML, or have an HTML or other OpenDocument version to meet accessibility standards.

  4. Addition of new profile for 'Identifying property and street information'. Please note that the publication date for this profile will appear on all the profiles but there are no changes to any other profiles at this time.

  5. The open standards profile for 'Publishing contract data' has been rewritten into plain English. There are no changes to the content or the standard. Please note that the new publishing date will appear on all of the open standards profiles, but these have not been changed at this time.

  6. The open standards profile for 'Formatting date and times in data' has been rewritten into plain English. There are no changes to the content or the standard. Please note that the new publishing date will appear on all of the open standards profiles, but these have not been changed at this time.

  7. The open standards profiles for 'Encoding characters' has been rewritten into plain English. There are no changes to the content or the standard. Please note that the new publishing date will appear on all of the open standards profiles, but these have not been changed at this time.

  8. The open standards profiles for 'Exchange cyber threat intelligence', 'Publishing grant data' and 'Use consistent country codes' have been rewritten into plain English. There are no changes to the content or the standards. Please note that the new publishing date will appear on all of the open standards profiles, but these have not been changed at this time.

  9. The open standards profiles for 'Exchange of location point', 'Sharing or collaborating with government documents' and 'Tag content with international language codes' have been rewritten into plain English. There are no changes to the content or the standards. Please note that the new publishing date will appear on all of the open standards profiles, but these have not been changed at this time.

  10. The MAIT open standards profile has been rewritten into plain English. There is no change to the content or the standard. Please note that the new publishing date will appear on all of the open standards profiles, but these have not been changed at this time.

  11. Publishing job vacancies has been rewritten into plain English. There is no change to the content or the standard. Please note that the new publishing date will appear on all of the open standards profiles, but these have not changed at this time.

  12. Rewrite of Publishing international development data into plain English Rewrite of Publishing government documents into plain English with addition of information about PDF/A

  13. Re-write of the profile for exchange of contact information into plain English.

  14. Content for the Calendar Exchange profile rewritten for clarity.

  15. Addition of the profile for the open standards STIX 2 and TAXII 2. These standards are for analysing and sharing intelligence between government departments, industry and international partners.

  16. Addition of the open standard 'Data standard for grant making' recently approved for use in government by the Open Standards Board.

  17. Updated language for greater clarity.

  18. We now use Unicode 11 as the standard for character encoding.

  19. Updating the Unicode standard for cross platform character encoding

  20. Addition of the approved Time and Date standard for use by the government.

  21. This page was updated to reflect clarification recommendation that were suggested on [Alphagov open standards page](https://github.com/alphagov/open-standards/issues/48)

  22. Open contracting data standard changed from OCDS V 1.0 to OCDS V 1.1.

  23. Open contracting data standard added.

  24. Added open standards for international development data

  25. Added publishing vacancies online standards profile and multi agency incident transfer.

  26. Added standard: exchange of location point

  27. Added open standards for country codes and language tags

  28. Added open standards for sharing calendar events and contacts information.

  29. Added 2 new standards: Viewing government documents and Sharing or collaborating with government documents.

  30. First published.