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.
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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.
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...
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
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.
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.
It makes sense to specify a single format, and ODF is the only standard format that currently suits the purpose and is free to be implemented by anyone.
There may be a minority of people using it, but i don't believe any of those people would be forced to pay extra to be able to.
As for sending files back in the format you sent, what happens if they're sending something new and aren't aware what format you want?
Aside from the fact that the government will need to maintain a large selection of apps to support all the different formats, and they have to draw the line somewhere... Otherwise what's to stop someone creating their own proprietary format and then charging the government for a program capable of reading it?
The cost of supporting multiple formats is prohibitive, and forcing the use of a proprietary format just pushes an unnecessary cost burden onto the people and makes the online government services less accessible.
Instead, if they support only a small set of standard formats, they reduce their own costs and any users who can't use the files can be pointed to a free download or provided with free apps on cd.
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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.
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... in furniture. In chairs to be precise.
Quite a few will be tossed about until Norway retracts this mandate, or adds "or OOXML"
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.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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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