South Africa Adopts ODF as a Government Standard

ais523 writes "As reported by Tectonic, South Africa's new Mininimum Interoperability Standards (pdf) for Information Systems in government (MIOS) explain the new rules for which data formats will be used by the government; according to that document, all people working for the South African government must be able to read OpenDocument Format documents by March, and the government aims to use one of its three approved document formats (UTF-8 or ASCII plain text, CSV, or ODF) for all its published documents by the end of 2008. A definition of 'open standard' is also included that appears to rule out OOXML at present (requiring 'multiple implementations', among other things that may also rule it out)."

Comments

Ironic

[youthoftoday]

that the link is a PDF?

Re:Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa, whoa - you read TFA? I'm pretty sure that means you're not allowed to comment.

Re:Ironic

[SnowZero]

Hm, will the laws be in a Wiki now?

Why not let their computers do it?

[NemoinSpace]

...all people working for the South African government must be able to read OpenDocument Format documents by March,

You think it would be hard enough to get computers to read odf, now they are mandating people do it? Won't someone think of the children!

Breaking news:

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

In a remarkable development, all the seven islands of the Seven Sister's Atoll, seceded from their common government and declared themselves independent sovereign nations. UN approved their nationhood in an emergency session. All of them, (population 7, 21, 3, 23, 7, 5, and 0.5 respectively) have immediately applied for the P membership of ISO. The population count of less than 1 raised a few eyebrows. It turned out to be the National Geographic photographer who camps there every summer. It is widely speculated in slashdot that all of the will soon vote to approve OOXML.

Re:Breaking news:

[DavidD_CA]

.. and in related news, many special interest groups are eager to register their new .SS domain names.

Damn, they beat us at the rugby...

[rHBa]

...and they beat us to open standards!!!

Re:Google Support for ODF

[Mike Morgan]

Sorry, yes I also forgot that OpenOffice's default format is ODF.

Re:Politics For Nerds?!!

[ozmanjusri]

Obviously this has nothing to do with the US government at all.

It gives you the chance to compare your government with one which takes a common-sense approach to document formats.

You can cry now, if you want to.

Re:In this Corner

[ozmanjusri]

This guy better watch out for Steve "The Chair" Ballmer.

Actually, as soon as Ballmer heard, he despatched one of Microsoft's Special Ops "negotiators" in a private jet to Pretoria.

Fortunately for the Africans, the "negotiator" bailed out halfway across the South Atlantic ocean. In a statement released later he said;

The flight had been going well until I dozed off for a minute or two, then woke to see blue screens on the panel in front of me. By the time I realised it was just the sky, I had my chute on and was halfway out the escape hatch...