The government of Portugal as published a national digital interoperability regulation (PDF in the Portuguese Journal of the Republic), following up on and detailing the interpretation of the 2011 law on Open Standards. The interoperability regulation specifies the open standards that should be used by Portuguese public sector bodies, and as such has consequences for IT procurement and specifications.

While adopting open standards such as ODF, PDF, XML, XMPP, IMAP, SMTP, CALDAV and LDAP and others does not directly relate to the re-use of government data, it is an important ingredient of making open government data an easier goal to reach.

Data that is already present inside public sector bodies in open standards can be more readily be re-used when published.

The Portuguese association of open source software vendors has welcomed the step as a way of ensuring a level playing field and encouraging competition, and have provided a (unofficial) translation of the new regulation (in PDF).