“Open standards” is a fluid term encompassing those standards which are available to be employed to develop multiple implementations compatible with the standard. No single definition can encompass what makes up an open standard, although there are many consistencies between experts, scholars, and lawmakers in their attempts to define the term. The main reasons behind governments adopting open standards are to reduce costs by preventing vendor lock-in and promoting interoperability between different implementations and technologies. However, achieving interoperability between multiple independent implementations that are compliant with a particular standard remains a significant challenge.