I sincerely hope this is not the case. It would be very unfortunate if government forces citizens to take a certain route.

From my small investigation ICDL seems to be a pretty widespread standard that is supposed to be vendor neutral and not linked to any particular software. See this link for some information. http://www.ecdl.com/programmes/index.jsp?p=102&n=108 as well as this one http://www.ecdl.com/programmes/index.jsp?p=108&n=119.  I hope this is what was in mind