Slashdot Mirror
Norway Mandates Government Use of ODF and PDF
siDDis writes "Earlier this year Slashdot mentioned that Norway was moving towards mandatory use of ODF and PDF. Now it's official: the Norwegian government has mandated the use of open document formats from January 1st, 2009. There are three formats that have been mandated for all documentation between authorities, users and partners. HTML for all public information on the Web, PDF for all documents where layout needs to be preserved and ODF for all documents that the recipient is supposed to be able to edit. Documents may also be published in other formats, but they must always be available in either ODF or PDF."
When you really think about it, how stupid would it be if a large government agency even in the US sent out a "document meant for editing" in a microsoft office format. I mean seriously. If the IRS sent me a tax form as a .doc file I would call them up and tell em what I thought of that but probably wouldn't get through cuz it'd already be flooded with pissed off people. I mean, that's like requiring all US citizens to own a copy of Office. Same with Norway. Any country that doesn't choose a non-propietary format is crazy.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Hmmm... This may be a problem because my country of Garbagestan (which I have just formed by taking control of all the homes on my street) has made HTML, PDF, and ODF illegal under pain of a forced upgrade to Vista.
Not to karma whore or anything... but the least you think an editor would do is provide the bokmal translation. This proves it... Slashdot hates Norwegian people. Again, not to karma whore:
" enhver burde ha likeverdig adgang å offentligheten beskjed : Åpen standarder bli tvangsmessig innen regjeringen. " regjeringen har bestemte det alle beskjed opp på regjeringen websites burde være anvendelig i fri luft formatter HTML PDF eller ODF. Med dette bestemmelse tidene når offentligheten dokumenter der hvor bare anvendelig inne Microsoft's Ord - formatter kommer å slutt. 'Everybody burde ha likeverdig adgang å offentligheten beskjed. Fra 2009 det borger ville være i stand til valgte hvilke programvare å bruk for at få innpass å offentligheten beskjed. Det regjeringen bestemmelse ville likeledes gjøre bedre konkurransen imellom leverandør av kontor søknadene sier DEN - minister Heidi Praktfull Røys. " denne er avgjørelsen av regjeringen : HTML burde være det primære formatter for forlagsartikkel av offentligheten beskjed på Sykehuslege. PDF (1.4 eller nyere , eller PDF / EN ISO 19005-1) er tvangsmessig når du ønske å gjemme originalen layout av en dokumentet. ODF ISO IEC 26300) må av sted anvendt når utgiveren dokumenter det er mente å bli forandret etter dataoverfører eg. blankett det er å bli fylte inne av brukeren. "- Norge Ministerium av Regjeringen Administrasjon og Forbedring "
*Translated by hand.
I got a catholic block.
I honestly don't know the technical ends and outs of either format (I'm a physicist, not a CS... albeit one who had to fuss at his students this semester for turning in crap in .docx format after I told them plaintext), but why the choice of pdf over postscript for the "formatting preserved" format? My department seems to use them pretty interchangeably... and aren't there tons of tools that do nifty things to postscript? (ps2* and *2ps style things?)
Does it compress better or something?
A fourth format was also specified: Adobe Flash was mandated for all documents that need to include animated dancing silhouettes.
Could you use any chairs? Free same day air delivery!
Basically everyone under 40 in Scandinavia speaks good english. Better english than many Americans, in fact.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
But do they have senses of humor and are they able to understand when their culture isn't actually the point of the post, but instead just a detail in a parody of a very common practice on slashdot. I think so. Gotta a friend from Stavanger. He's an ok guy and pretty sharp, apparently sharper and a little more lighthearted than /. mods.
Spot on about speaking better english than Americans though. My first reply is proof positive.
I got a catholic block.
Just kidding, this is truly awesome. With any luck, this will improve the efficiency of document handling in the Norwegian government and help set off a domino effect. Unfortunately, I think it's likely that us poor Americans would be the last such domino to fall, given the unbelievable amount of data that would require conversion (much of it possibly by hand) and our government's overt support of big business (i.e. Microsoft).
But the idea of thomas.loc.gov all being in PDF... wow...
I will be curious to see what other nations pick this up and runs with it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hence the Office plugin.
There are lots of articles and talk about it surfacing in one government after another. And in some, it seems to get watered down to meaninglessness or removed completely (no doubt after behind-the-scenes pressure and corruption). So I have tended to ignore a lot of it. But this one might be firm. Still, having to wait an entire year, will it stick? A year from now, will it really happen there? Has the domino effect started?
Are you implying that MSWord is "snappy and crisp" compared to other offerings? That is certainly not my experience.
What, MS Word doesn't support ODF? If it doesn't MS better get at it.
There is a perfectly reasonable solution to this: You can use MS Office with ODF load/save plugins. They exist, they're free, and as far as I'm aware they work.
I'm not sure there are many documents that government send out that need editing, but if we suppose for a moment that there were some it is bizzare that they would select a single document format that only a minority of people use today.
The history of governments selecting single standards like this should have taught us all lessons that prevent us from doing this any more. x400, x500, TP0 & TP4 anybody?
I read somewhere about a policy in spain that made a lot more sense, basically one of the provincial governments there commit to sending your document back to you in whatever form you send it to them in.
Once ODF gets some momentum, there will be a lot more tools being built. Just look at the options for PDF. The official Adobe Reader has been crap since about version 6. (Not sure if 8 is any better.) If better ODF support is needed, someone will build it.
Does anyone know how this standard affects files that are not text? I mean things like posters, graphic images, audio, video, databases, complex spreadsheets, slideshows, etc. Basically, everything outside of Word?
For example, many government employees use Excel and are using features not supported by ODF. What happens when they need to send those files to others to edit?
-David
Could you elucidate on the areas in which Adobe's reader (the one you are referring to) is deficient, otherwise you risk being called a troll!
The circular. I think this is missing some details that were recommended (like don't encrypt your postscript) that may appear elsewhere.
Bruce Perens.
The applications are not snap and crispy but is that the fault of the standard or the application? With ODF, if someone creates an application that is blindly fast and light, everyone will get it. This avoids the vendor lock-in where you have issues opening up a Word '95 document today with Word '07.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Postscript is a programming language; that's why you can have stack errors. PDF is purely declarative.
One word: speed. Going from 5 to 6 felt like a big step backwards. It was slow to load and sluggish to work with. My experience with everything after 5 has been worse than that. There are several alternate PDF viewers available that are quicker and easier to work with. I'm sure someone will pop up to extol the virtues of Foxit or Sumatra or whatever.
While we're at it, why don't you tell me about the deficiencies with OO.o.
I also suggest you check the definition of a troll. You could get flame bait at a stretch, but troll is unlikely. Then again I've seen 'troll' = 'I disagree, but can't argue the point.'
On Linux, all the above Windows points are valid and in addition, it's extra slow and ugly looking considering the fonts and general interface.
Although Norway itself, a relatively progressive country in IT matters (both Trolltech and Opera originated there) is fairly insigificant in the big scheme of things, this move coupled with other national governments moving in similar directions, might very well be enough to get the ball rolling. If Norwegian government IT sectors report significant savings and increased efficiency, then even more governments will likely follow. It's a fact of life that smaller countries take a good look at other small countries to compare efficiencies and practices.
A good example would be the Finnish school system, which has consistently scored very highly in the PISA educational ratings. That had a major influence on other European countries, such as Germany, which scored much lower, and Switzerland, making them look at how they could improve their own educational systems. It's the same thing with IT. You could very well see other European countries making similar decisions in the future.
The biggest hurdle will of course be Microsoft, which will do anything it can to stop acceptance of ODF and push in OOXML through the door. They will almost certainly try to get their big business partners to bully local governments into accepting OOXML in place of ODF.
Actually it's been crap since version 5.
I used nothing but Acrobat Reader 4 until I discovered Foxit Reader.
Question everything
I use OpenOffice.org here at home. Calc actually manages to be MORE annoying in some ways than excel. For example using the delete key pops up a dialog asking you what about the cell you want to delete. And less so in others. Moving/copy cells is less braindead than Excel. It's free. But the documentation is crap.
TBPH, it's not a clear winner over excel.
Question everything
Quite simply, xpdf is substantially faster. Adobe has been working hard on adding useless bulk (features?) to their reader, while readers in the xpdf branch have simply gotten fast and simple, while also rendering everything accurately.
Abiword and KOffice are both fast and light.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
According to the Norwegian Government's Reference Catalogue for IT Standards in Government Sector OOXML is currently "under observation". If OOXML is approved as an ISO standard, it could imply that government bodies in Norway will be able to choose between OOXML and ODF for editable documents.
Press release, published 21.12.2007
Equal access to public information for all citizens in Norway
Open document standards to be obligatory for state information
The Norwegian Government has decided that all information on state-operated web sites should be accessible in the open document formats HTML, PDF or ODF. This means an end to the time when public documents are published in closed formats only.
- Everybody should have equal access to public information. From 2009 on, Norwegian citizens will be able to freely choose which software to use to get access to information from public offices. More competition between suppliers of office programs will be another effect of the government's decision, Minister of Government Administration and Reform Heidi Grande Røys says.
The Government's decision is as follows:
* HTML will be the primary format for publishing public information on the Internet.
* PDF (PDF 1.4 and later or PDF/A ISO 19005-1) is obligatory when there is a wish to keep a document's original appearance.
* ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) is to be used to publish documents to which the user should be able to make changes after downloading, e.g. public forms to be filled out by the user. This format is also made obligatory.
- For many years, Norway had no specific software policy. This is now changing. Our government has decided that ICT development in the public sector shall be based on open standards. In the future, we won't accept that government bodies are locking users of public information to closed formats, Ms Grande Røys says.
The new demands will take effect from January 1, 2009 for state bodies. The Ministry of Government Administration and Reform will be working to formulate regulations making this obligatory for municipal organs as well. The Government's aim is that the regulations should take force from January 1, 2009.
The government decision does not prevent state bodies from using other document formats in their communication with the users, provided that the documents also are produced in one of the obligatory formats, ODF or PDF.
Heidi Grande Røys says that state and municipal organs as well should be able to receive documents in these formats from their users and partners.
- This is the first step in standardising document formats. We are also considering formats for document exchange with the public sector and for the exchange of documents within the public sector, Ms Grande Røys says.
A list of obligatory and recommended standards in the public sector according to the Government's recent decision is to be found in Referansekatalog for IT-standarder i offentlig sektor (Reference catalogue of IT standards in the public sector, Norwegian edition only).
Not to mention the way it changes your text to initial-caps all the time, and that there's no way to prevent it from doing that short of disabling the feature altogether. In which case, why did it not just default to "off"?
At least in Excel you can hit ctrl+z when it alters your text for you and undoes it without undoing what you just typed.
Well, have you reported this annoyance to the openoffice developers? Or looked for a way to turn it off?
I'm pretty sure excel behaves in the same way, but most people turn it off.
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The Norskies are also pretty open about engineering standards: http://www.standard.no/
Most companies jealously guard their "intellectual property", Norway makes most of theirs freely available.
It ain't the books or documentation that make a project successful, it's the people.
Scandinavians are so selfsure about the quality of their english that they'll insist that your rightings aren't valid, as you merely speak american. I've been living in Sweden in some years and feel again the most common swinglishsigns. I job now as an oversitter from swedish to english, in addition to controlling english texts, and it has been a good affair.
They are not undermining content or freedom of speech... The format is only a container.
They already mandate the use of standard containers or transmission media for other types of information, you can call the government on the telephone but you can't contact them using ham radio... You can write them a letter on a piece of paper, but you can't carve them a stone tablet.
They have to standardise on one format for practical reasons, to support a wide range of formats is more expensive and more error prone. As a taxpayer, i don't want to be paying unnecessarily for the government to support multiple formats.
They should standardise on published documented standards for several reasons.
They provide the widest and lowest cost access for the population who have to deal with the government, programs for reading/writing standard formats such as PDF and ODF are available for a wide range of systems and at a wide range of pricing/support structures. Meaning, you can obtain such programs for free if you want, or if your needs/budget are different you can obtain software with varying levels of commercial support. Big vendors such as IBM, Sun and Novell provide commercial applications and support for ODF if that's what you need. Because there are multiple vendors, competition pushes the prices down and quality up.
If they were to use a proprietary format, not only would they lock themselves in but also force third parties dealing with them to get themselves locked in too. By using a proprietary format the government are forced to purchase proprietary products at whatever price is set, and the end users are similarly forced. Because they need these particular programs (and anything else they might require) to deal with the government, people have no choice but to buy them. Because of this, the vendor can charge ridiculous amounts for retail copies while potentially giving the government big discounts to discourage them from migrating.
As a taxpayer, i don't want the government to waste money dealing with multiple formats.
As a taxpayer, i want them purchasing their software in a competitive marketplace so that they get the best deal.
As an end user, i want the same ability to go for the best deal rather than being forced down a particular route.
As a taxpayer, most important of all i want a government that does the best for ITS PEOPLE... I want a government that fights for the best deal, I want a government that buys from local suppliers whenever possible (paying more to a local supplier than to a foreign one is often a better deal, since a big chunk of that money will come back as tax), I want a government that doesn't force unnecessary expenses on it's people - especially expenses that cause money to leave the country.
Any government that forces all of it's taxpayers to spend $450 on a foreign product is acting irresponsibly, that's a huge amount of money leaving the country.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
... in furniture. In chairs to be precise.
Quite a few will be tossed about until Norway retracts this mandate, or adds "or OOXML"
Yeah, go on, report it to the OO.o developers:
1. Ask in the forums, get slammed by smartasses and then be asked to file a bug.
2. Learn the whole process of filing bugs in Open Office.
3. Search to see if someone filed a similar bug, read trough 25 different bug reports with similiar, but not exactly the same problems.
4. File the bug.
5. Get slammed in the comments to the bug for filing the bug improperly.
6. Get the bug marked as a duplicate. Then spend some time arguing whether or not it is a duplicate.
7. Wait five years, maybe they'll fix the bug in the 4.3 release.
Evolution is just a scientific theory. Creationism is not.
It doesn't. And I don't think there is a way to turn such behaviour on.
The main thing stopping me from using ooo calc is that it doesn't support web queries. I use them to pick up stock prices off various web sites, then after a bit of processing the results (change in value of my stock holdings) get fed into an access database.
In other news: Microsoft has hired a sizeable force of Blackwater interrogation specialists to kidnap key individuals and influence Norways' government decision and policy makers to change their terroristic software policies "with force if necessary." "This kind of socialist-communist software can not be tolerated in a capitalist market economy," Microsoft's Blackwater press-liaison said. Bush commented that "Norway, you're next on my Freedom and Peace list," and also noted that "Norway has oil." And that "because of it, they should well afford expensive Microsoft software" and that this kind of terrorist path can not be allowed for the Norwegians.
You sure nobody got bitten by a Møøse in there?
When I'm doing quick and dirty stuff I use PDF, but when I want real publication-quality material nothing but postscript will do the trick.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Well then, you better start calling people:
http://www.google.ca/search?as_filetype=doc&as_sitesearch=.gov
Of course there's a Office 2007 PDF plug-in available for free download.
(My CAPTCHA is "antique".)
This morning my 4 year old daughter (a norwegian/american half-breed) told me
Ikke gjør that, you Monkey!!!!
Jeg tror ikke de fleste tenker på "røy". Røys er faktisk et ord som kan brukes slik: steinrøys. Men en praktfull steinrøys blir jo desto mer morsomt?
I use version 8 (and did use 7) on Windows because a lot of PDFs would fail to load properly for me in Foxit Reader when I used it. Adobe did not hardcode all those new features in, they are all just extensions. I've disabled 90% of them, and just enabled reading and searching functions; best way to go for ultimate compatibility. Reader 8 is very fast now. Google it up.
On Linux, KPDF hasn't loaded a PDF incorrectly for me yet. As soon as it is available for Windows I'll probably use it.
xpdf is for people who like opposite way cursors on their menus and Motif-style interface, OLD PEOPLE. Oh yeah and
"GNOME users are idiots" ~Linus Torvalds (Google that up too)
However, I'm not a troll, but I do not like GNOME and I'm totally unwilling to support it now that de Icaza is a Microsoft shill. Qt is all GPL now (and still some people don't know, it's been quite some time). There's no reasons regarding licenses to use GNOME anymore. And besides, Xfce tends to be faster anyway.
Also, I generally avoid all the Motif-style or old-looking interface apps as much as possible. They are just an absolute eyesore, particularly xpdf and ghostview.
So what your saying is that the process while not perfect, is better than the alternative offered by microsoft...
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The rest of your post is very true, but this bit is flawed. In general it is far more efficient and economical to have a mutual ( and with a focus on mutual ) agreement of free tradebetween countries. There are plenty of reasons for this,ranging from being able to take advantage of economiesof scale to local factors affecting the efficiency of your production. Money spentonoverpriced goods doesnot simply "get back into the market" because youendupstributing resources ininefficient ways. The most sensible policy would be to use whichever suplier provides the best offer without penalising foreign ones, but this relies on one criticall assumption, that the countries you trade with do the same.
This is why free trade agreements (when implemented correctly ) are so powerful. By agreeing not to discriminate against each other's produser countries can use their resources more efficiently than if they were isolating themselves. It is worth pointing out that this doesn't mean that just because an organisation claims to support "free trade" that they actually do. WIPO ould be one good example of what would fundamentally be a sane idea (having an agreed framework of rules regarding the use of creative works ) which has been horribly abused. My key point is that the problems ith these cases is not that they promote international trade ( that is a good thing ) but rather the same old corruption which troubles domestic markets as well as international ones.
Having just tried, i found that in openoffice...
Backspace deletes the contents of a cell without prompting you (you can still undo)
Delete brings up a dialog allowing you to delete not just the contents but also any formatting, or to choose exactly what to remove... You can make it just remove formatting, or numbers, or text, or formulae etc... Very useful to strip numbers from a large block of cells without affecting formatting or textual content.
As for web queries i don't know, tho i know quite a few people who do the same as you with various scripts backing up to more serious databases.
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They are not undermining content or freedom of speech... The format is only a container.
But its not, and that's the thing. All containers are finite things, and therefor, you can only say what the container allows you to say. So, sure, you can make the argument that whatever speech you have is "good enough", but that's really a technocratic approach that, as usual, ignores the limitations of its own technological offerings. It's oppression, pure and simple, and you have to think carefully about oppression, before you do it.
It almost makes me feel like inventing a new proprietary format plus an editing tool, and then patenting it, simply to rebel against the oppression of standardization.
This is my sig.
You've been modded down...but the appropriate response is to ask - why? Please elaborate.
In general it is far more efficient and economical to have a mutual ( and with a focus on mutual ) agreement of free tradebetween countries.
The problem with this efficiency is that your determination of efficiency is the investment centric return on the dollar, and investors do not actually add value to the economy. They do not invent, and they do not sell. There's little difference between someone who owns stock and calls himself or herself a capitalist, or a soviet era appartchik collecting his own private tax of corruption on the current 5 year plan.
Free Trade places a premium on the value of the investor in society and completely undermines the value of the inventor. As much as we ballyhoo the efficiency of free enterprise, we always find corporations with a dozen deadweight managers and hangers on for one talented developer that really drives the whole show, and usually does against the best efforts of those busisesses to impose a sort mediocrity that it gets in exchange for some predictability.
In general, free trade has destroyed America's manufacturing base, and, as a consequence, placed the middle class in constant jeopardy. Free trade is like socialism, a nice idea on paper, but one that ultimately didn't work. It just has taken longer for the disaster of free trade to play itself out in the United States than it did for Communism to destroy Russia, but, ultimately, the end result looks increasingly the same.
This is my sig.
Learn the tool before you make a statement.... "delete" and "backspace" are different keys
That's the beauty of it. How the program behaves is what makes its value. If you like to use Excel that is your freedom. If your spreadsheet program can't open or save to standard documents formats, complain to the maker.
:-)
Microsoft will have to either implement ODF, or loose the sale of MS-Office to all Norwegian offical offices.
My guess is that we will see ODF support in Office before 1st January 2009, and that is a good thing.
Myself I use OpenOffice, so this really doesn't affect me much
#find
anyone who uses a mac shouldn't freak out when suddenly something doesn't work on it.
Because I had it the opposite way I switched. After suffering through crashes with MS Windows, and not wanting to be treated like a criminal, I replaced my Windows PC with a Mac.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Older versions of IE have been made especially for the Mac
Ah but the Mac and Windows versions of IE weren't exactly compatible. A person going to the same website in both Mac and Windows versions of IE would not see the same thing. Then again this could be true of an browser that is cross platform.
FalconShould there be a Law?
for the Mac
I use NeoOffice, a native Mac port of Open Office. No X11 needed.
The fact of the matter is that if you are using Macs you will likely have compatibility issues every once in a while.
In the 5 months of using my MacBook Pro I have not had a problem with NeoOffice. While I haven't created or edited any docs with it yet, NeoOffice has opened Office 2007 .doc and .docx files I've downloaded from the net without a problem.
Microsoft could very well decide in the near future that it no longer wants to support MS Office on the Mac.
Though MS can threaten Apple to withdraw the Mac version of MS Office, I think MS would have to think long and hard before actually doing so. Courts, in the EU and US, may look at it as another example of how MS uses it's majority market position as a noncompetitive monopolistic practice.
FalconShould there be a Law?
WinXP is far far more compatible with any exiting Windows based application one would be REQUIRED to run in their business/government.
Because XP is being EOLed, End Of Life(ed). "And it's mainstream supports will last until 2009."
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm not a free market maniac but, really, should governments mandate particular specifications like this? Seems intrusive.
I did in the native port of Open Office for Macs, NeoOffice, without a problem. As for whether it can handle Office macros good I don't know.
FalconShould there be a Law?
My guess is MS Office will support the current version of ODF via a plug-in you have to download separately, and which will have several intentional flaws in it to make it slightly incompatible with OOXML and .doc and the conversion will slightly mess things up. Further, by 2009, there will probably be a newer version of ODF fixing all the initial problems and adding a pile of features that users request... it will take MS another few years to implement that version. Basically, I see MS stalling as much as possible, while simultaneously trying to add to OOXML features like DRM in the hopes that they can prevent ODF from ever being widely adopted as a worldwide standard. If it comes to it, expect basic OOXML reading and writing to be built into Windows and IE as they try to once again leverage their monopolies to undermine user choice.
My only question is - is there anything ODF doesn't do that businesses actually need their documents to do?
And do they support a scripting language?
My Journal
The magic sauce you ask? The secret is having a Minister of Government Administration and Reform, where the minister, Ms. Grande Røys have a Political Advisor that happens to be one http://no.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J%C3%B8rund_Leknes, a card-carrying geek if there ever was one;
Top 10 finalist in Norwegian programming championship, elected replacement representative to the legislative assembly since 2001, Opensource advocate and also bronze finalist of 2v2 StarCraft championship in 2000. He's even on Facebook. Did I mention he's probably younger than a lot of you guys, at 25?
Read this one over once more and cross out everything that would not be possible in the US, and you'll see.. Garbage In/Garbage Out. it holds true also for government (internet+tubes, anyone?).
... we are that stupid.
I'm willing to pay a tax and need to print the form from São Paulo city's site ( www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br ). Well, I just input my id number in my browser and get the politically incorrect answer:
"Incorrect browser. Use Internet Explorer" (in Portuguese, that is)
This could be a political issue. The former administration was pro- Free Software; the current one may want to state they're different.
Universal health care, true high speed broadband, an enlightened prison system, a beautiful nation, and now this -- is there anything wrong with Norway??? I sure would like to find out if there is -- that's why I wrote an open petition to their PM.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
To mandate openness in a democratic country?
In which derided parallel universe do you live?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.