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

Free copies of office

[thetoadwarrior]

What this comes down to is they're negotiating for free copies of office, imo. Once MS throws some their way they'll give up.

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

[rahvin112]

Not free copies, a big discount on their network license. When ODF was being "looked at" in several European governments said governments got HUGE discounts on their license renewal. It's a great strategy to save money even if you have no intention of switching.

Re:Free copies of office

[Nerdfest]

I'm not sure why people don't switch. I always hear about things it can't do, or thongs it can't do well, but in my experience, for almost all genera cases, OpenOffice or LibreOffice works fine. My current dev team has been using it (although mainly to read documents) for the last year with no problems. Perhaps the few people that need the 'special' capabilities that Word or Excel has should get a licence for it and the vast majority of others use open software?

Re:Free copies of office

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, I don't use office stuff that much at home. But last week I went to use LibreOffice for the first time in a couple months, and it crashed halfway thought the second page. It was version 3.6 or something like that. I've upgraded to 4 and and haven't had any problems, but I haven't really used it that much either. I got annoyed at the crash so I tried out Google Docs, and can't understand why anybody would want to use that over LibreOffice, let alone MS Office. You can't even create your own custom styles. Closest you can get is reconfiguring one of the premade "Header" styles. 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.

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

[rtb61]

'Erm', I would hope you understand the difference between a document and an application, if you worked in R&D for the Australian Government. Forcing the use of an accessible document format to ensure all commercial and free applications can access that document free of government enforced fees and charges to a private entity ensures adherence to the countries competitive trading laws. Prior to this, playing the, 'tee hee we're just a bunch of dumb fuck ups', might have sort of worked, but continuing to play that card just makes them look permanently like a bunch of 'dumb fuck ups'.

Re:Free copies of office

[Clifton Beach]

It's not about individuals receiving free copies (which, you are right, would not be allowed). It's about the government office negotiating free copies or a bigger discount so that they can make their budget go further.

Re:Free copies of office

[shutdown -p now]

They are not announcing that they're moving away from MS Office, they are only talking about standardizing on ODF. Office supports ODF these days, you know. It's right there in the summary.

Re:Free copies of office

[Bearhouse]

Been using MS office for years, never had much trouble with it, apart from weird formatting issues that we all know about, (try copying & pasting between Word and PPT, for example).

Same with Open/Libre Office. Never had any stability problems, and in one notable case, was able to open a 'critical' word document for a customer in OO when the various versions of MS could not. Strange.

As for Google docs, yup, until it matures, and maybe is better linked to stand-alone apps, (not everyone has permanent access to the internet), is not likely to satisfy power users.

But that's missing the point - O/L Office and/or Google docs are more than enough for most users - and anyway the point here is about the document format, not the applications(s). One of the problems most of the people here report is the inability of O/L Office to satisfactorily read the formatting of MS Office docs, (hardly surprising; it's a nightmare). But again, for most users, is all that weird formatting and animation really needed?

Forcing a single, truly interoperable document format standard accross Govt. sounds a great idea to me.

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.

AU Software Prices are Ridiculous

[number17]

The price of software in Australia is ridiculous and they can't justify it.

"Microsoft Office Professional 2013 costs $599 in Australia and $US399.99 ($A383.54) in the US"
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/evasive-microsoft-adobe-fail-to-justify-prices-20130322-2gjkr.html

Re:AU Software Prices are Ridiculous

[Neo-Rio-101]

Unfortunately seems to be a matter of charging what the market will bear.

How much can a koala bear?

Re:AU Software Prices are Ridiculous

[AbsGeekNZ]

Bitch bitch bitch....us Kiwis pay even more for software....$NZ859.99 = $AU722.87 = $US696.85....

Crazy bastards have been over charging because it is priced at what the market will accept

http://www.noelleeming.co.nz/shop/computers/computer-software/business-home-software/microsoft-office13pro-office-pro-2013/prod109934.html

Re:AU Software Prices are Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Australiana

By Austen Tayshus

Sittin' at home last Sunday mornin' me mate Boomerrang Said he was havin' a few people around for a barbie, Said he might Kookaburra or two.
I said, "Sounds great, will Wallaby there?"
He said "Yeah and Vegemite come too".
So I said to the wife "Do you wanna Goanna?". She said "I'll go if Dingos".
So I said "Wattle we do about Nulla?"
He said "Nullabors me to tears, leave him at home."
We got to the party about two and walked straight out the kitchen to put some booze in the fridge. And you wouldn't believe it, there's Boomer's wife Warra sittin there tryin to Platypus!
Now, I don't like to speak Illawarra, but I was shocked, I mean how much can a Koala bear.
So I grabbed a beer, flashed me Wangarratta and went out and joined the party.
Pretty soon Ayers Rocks in and things really started jumpin'. This Indian girl, Marsu, turns up, dying to go to the toilet but she couldn't find it. I said to me mate Al, "Hey, where can Marsupial?" He said "She can go outback with the fellas, she's probably seen a cockatoo".
Well just then Warra comes out of the kitchen with a few drinks for everybody. Fairdinkum, you've never seen a Coolabah maid. I grabbed a beer and said, "Thanks Warra - tah".
A couple of Queensland at the party, one smellin' pretty strongly of aftershave. One of 'em sat down next to me and I turned to him and I said, "Ya know mate, Eureka Stockade!"
It was a really hot day; Oscar felt like a swim. He said to Ina, "Do you want a have a dip in the Riverina?" She said "I haven't got my Kosciusko".
Well Bo says, "Come in starkers, Wattle Lake Eyre!" Ina says "What, without so much as a Thredbo?" Ah, Perisher thought! Has Eucumbine in yet?
Well a few of the blokes decided to play some cricket. Boomer says "Why doesn't Wombat?" "Yeah, and let Tenterfield".
He said I should have a bowl but I was too out of it to play cricket so I suggested a game of cards. I said to Lyptus "Wanna game of Eucalyptus?" He said "There's no point mate, Darwins everytime."
Well Bill said he'd like a smoke. Nobody knew where the dope was stashed. I said "I think Merinos." But I was just spinning a bit of a yarn. Barry pulls a joint out of his pocket. Bill says "Great, Barrier Reefer, what is it mate?" "Noosa Heads of course. Me mate Adelaide 'em on me." And it was a great joint too, Blue Mountains away and his Three Sisters.
Well I thought I'd roll one meself, I said "Chuck us the Tally Hobart". He said "They're out on the Laun, Ceston, can you get em for us?" Burnie says "Its okay mate, she's apples, I'll get em for ya"
Just then Alice Springs into action, starts to pack Billabong. And you wouldn't believe it, the bongs broken. I said "Lord Howe!"
"Hay-man" somebody says "Will a Didgeridoo?" I said "Hummmmm mummmm mummmmm mummmmm maybe it'll have ta."
I look in the corner and there's Bass sittin there, not getting into it, not getting out of it, I said "What, is Bass Strait or somthin?" Boomer says "As a matter a fact mate, he's a cop" I said "Ya jokin mate, a cop, I'm getting outta here, lets Goanna." She said "No way, I'm hangin round till Gum leaves. Besides, I dont wanna leave Jacardanda party on his own. Have you seen him? I think he's trying to crack on Toowoomba, he's already tried to Mount Isa And he'll definitely try to lead you Australiana!"

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:Seen it first hand

[greg1104]

The idea of separating format and content is beyond most users of word processing software. That is why the fight is MS Office vs. OpenOffice instead of talking about what Latex interface everyone uses.

Styles have the same sort of issue. I know how to use them, and the style toolbar introduced in Word 2003 was a major improvement to how I interact with a word processor. Sadly, I almost never come across another document where styles have been applied thoughtfully. I wrote my last book with careful style-oriented formatting, and every editor and reviewer it passed through destroyed some portion of that while collecting up feedback. Made me feel like the only person on earth who actually pays attention to rogue style additions.

Standby for a vist from Bill

[Dantoo]

Bill Gates to call on the Prime Minister to get this nipped in the bud in 4 3 2...........doh he was there yesterday!

  http://www.news.com.au/national-news/prime-minister-julia-gillard-meets-microsoft-founder-bill-gates-in-canberra/story-fncynjr2-1226652083384

Good news

[readingaccount]

I work for the Australian Government (researcher). If this proposal is accepted (big IF), it'll mean I can choose to use either LibreOffice or Office 2013. For the first time, I'll be able to work on Linux and Windows machines and exchange documents without worry about format incompatibilities or screwing up existing documents. Heck, I might willingly decide to use LibreOffice instead of Office 2013 because I despise the cursor animations, general animations and hence lag Office 2013 introduces which LO doesn't bother with. Could never do that before since compatibility has always been paramount.

Of course, even if it's implemented it'll take forever for existing documents to disappear (or at least enough of them to go out of service) before something like LibreOffice is feasible in corporate use.

Re:Good news

[greg1104]

Switching to OpenDocument won't make format incompatibilities go away; it will probably make them worse. The page rendering in OpenOffice is not the same as Microsoft Office, and both suites can change formatting between versions. Formatting on Linux and Windows isn't quite the same either, because of subtle font changes as a start. If you want formatting that is relatively stable, you can't use an Office-style tool at all. They are just not well suited for the job.

Even if you did have a tool that never screwed things up, I am confident you'll still find users who break documents by having no idea how formatting works. I've lost track of how many documents I've had to fix because the user did indenting with a hard carriage return and hitting space a few times. And then there's people who format tables by putting spaces between each column .