Open

Description

Openness is a design commitment, not a marketing label: Volt is built on open standards and NQM has a long record of open-source delivery and standards authorship. This is the opposite of the closed, proprietary stacks it competes with — customers are never locked in, and independent parties can inspect, verify and extend the technology.

On open standards, Volt’s identity and data models are built on the open W3C Decentralized Identifier (DID) and Verifiable Credentials specifications (open key, web, webvh DID methods), it targets NATO’s open STANAG 4774/4778 data-labelling standards, and NQM co-authored NIST SP 1800-36 (Trusted IoT networking). NQM also authors open standards rather than just consuming them: TAIBOM (a Trustable AI Bill of Materials, developed openly with BAE, BSI and TechWorks) and ManySecured (an open device-security standard).

On open source, NQM’s heritage runs deep: the webinos open-source IoT middleware (independently reviewed as the most secure of its kind, backed by 30+ organisations including Sony, Samsung and the W3C) and the use of CKAN, the de-facto open-source standard for government open-data platforms, in the Open City Data Platform.

Importance

Openness is what turns “trust us” into “verify it”: open standards prevent vendor lock-in and enable interoperability across organisations, while open source and open specifications let customers and regulators audit the technology they depend on. It is the foundation of digital sovereignty.

Benefit

• No lock-in: open standards and inspectable implementations mean customers keep control and can switch or extend without being trapped.
• Trust through transparency: open specifications and code can be independently reviewed and verified, rather than taken on faith.
• Interoperability by default: building on W3C/NATO/NIST standards lets partners and third parties connect on common terms.
• Standards leadership as a moat: authoring TAIBOM, ManySecured and NIST/NATO contributions puts NQM ahead of the standards its market will adopt.

Defence Relevance

Defence increasingly demands sovereign, non-proprietary capability that interoperates across UK, NATO and partner boundaries and avoids prime-contractor lock-in. Volt’s basis in open W3C/NATO/NIST standards, and NQM’s authorship of TAIBOM and ManySecured, directly serve the DTW’s requirement for loosely coupled, NATO-compliant, interoperable targeting services and its Exploitable-by-Design intent. Complements Standardised and maps to DTW Cycle 0 criterion 10 (alignment to Exploitable-by-Design).

Civilian & Enterprise Relevance

For enterprise and public-sector buyers, open standards are the basis for cross-organisation data spaces and for avoiding costly vendor lock-in, while open source builds the trust and community that government open-data (CKAN) and privacy-sensitive deployments rely on. Openness and verifiability also help meet transparency expectations under regimes such as the EU AI Act and GDPR — and, in a UK market where most sovereign-tech peers have been acquired or wound up, “open and independent” is a distinct commercial position.

Related

• Standardised — the interoperable core openness rests on
• Supply chain — TAIBOM-backed verifiable AI supply chain
• Distributed, Private — sovereignty and no central lock-in
• Volt4AI

Sources

• Volt §how-it-works — W3C DID/VC, NIST SP 1800-36, STANAG 4774/4778
• TAIBOM (project)
• ManySecured (project)
• Independent review rates webinos most secure
• OCDP feasibility — CKAN, webinos open source