Aussie Government Proposes OpenDocument As the Standard Format

Bismillah writes "The Australian government chief technical officer wants some views on proposals for the official standard operating environment, which features OpenDocument as the proposed document format. Otherwise, the Aussie government is pretty much a Microsoft shop, with Windows 7 x64 and IE10 as the standard platform. 'Interoperability and support for several versions of Microsoft Office is cited by the AGCTO as reasons to go with ODF, along with flexibility and the fact that the format is continously updated and developed. Spreadsheet formulae are now included in the ODF 1.2 specification as well and the AGTO believes that this, along with Microsoft Office 2013 supporting the format, will help to reliably transfer formulae between applications.' According to the CTO's call for opinions, 'Standardizing on a format supported by a wide range of office suites provides for the greatest possible degree of interoperability without mandating the use of a specific product, as well as providing the best basis for reliable interchange of information between agencies deploying differing office productivity suites.'"

Comments

Seen it first hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked in government for a few years. They heavily rely on documents. The amount of time spent on re-formatting broken documents (particularly between versions of Office) is -staggering-. Microsoft office incompatibility is a major issue and costs the Australian tax payer an absolute fortune.

I do not promise that using ODF will fix the problems, but I constantly heard people (not a person, but people) fighting Microsoft Office, broken templates, formatting, etc. Constantly means "pretty much 8 hours a day, 5 days a week". I cringed every time I would open up a document, because in all likelihood, the formatting was kludged together.

I have been using Office suites for about 20 years, and I can tell you that "paste as text" is not enough to avoid the dreadded Microsoft Word "spiral of death". I use styles, I don't mess with indents and outdents, nor do I change the formatting of individual paragraphs - but I have been caught out more times than I can count - even when following these rules. The most hardcore users I've come across all say that it comes down to experience, and knowing what to avoid ...

I think the Aus government are making a good call - hopefully they've considered their migration plans - and chosen their tools well.

For the record, iTunes and Microsoft Office are two of my most hated applications, with good reason.

Re:Seen it first hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Office is a damn fucking nightmare when it comes to things like consistency and accuracy. Using cut and paste directly between documents isn't just a crapshoot, it's an inevitable disaster.

You'd think the clipboard would be a nice, program agnostic buffer for transposing information between programs. Not with office. Office actually has it's own internal clipboard that runs in parallel with the system one so the rules don't apply. (Thats a very common theme with office. It breaks all sorts of UI conventions, uses numerous undocumented system hooks, etc) When you copy-paste in office you don't know what kind of bizarre binary constructs can be dumped in to your document. What you can know is that they'll cause inconsistent behavior and broken documents that cannot be fixed inside office.. Because copying the data out silently brings the corruption with it.

The only way to achieve any kind of consistency is to work in an outside program, and put off bringing the data in to office at the very last possible moment. It's pretty sad when you have to treat word docs like they're PDFs.

Baring that, using some autohotkey scripts to wash data through a more sane text editor (I like notepad++), works reasonably well. It's an ugly hack, but so is MS Office.

Re:Free copies of office

[multiben]

I doubt it. I worked in R&D for the Aussie government for many years and we were not supposed to accept so much as a free coffee from vendors. There is a very strict set of tendering and purchasing protocols and general sense of paranoia about showing any kind of favouritism or cutting deals. That's not to say it never happens, but for something on this scale I would say it is highly unlikely.

I should also say that this exact question of moving to OpenDocument has come up several times before in Aus gov and got nowhere. The problem is that in the small sample trials they run, the software just fails miserably to deliver on multiple levels. I know this is probably going to upset those of you who are blinded by fanboism, but the fact is that MS office is super super stable and open office hasn't reached that level yet. Hopefully one day it will.

Re:Free copies of office

[ozmanjusri]

the fact is that MS office is super super stable

You must have a different version from mine then, because the MS Office I see used in most businesses crashes, locks up, loses formatting, corrupts documents and is generally one of the biggest causes of wasted time in any working office environment.

Look, I get tat you don't like Libre Office, but don't pretend the MS version is any paragon of stability. It just isn't.

Re:Free copies of office

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand why so many people don't want to give up MS Office, and it's not just because they refuse to give anything else a chance.

I want very much to switch from MSOffice to LibreOffice. Every year, I try the latest version, and I sadly conclude that I have to stay with MSOffice.

Even people who are eager and highly motivated to switch away from MSOffice can't do so.