Good point, but how would you make a standard civil servant understand this. And, please, imagine MS's dull explanations over many pages concerning details of the openness of the 5000 pages standard and its transitional version and reasons for failures and bla bla.... In DK, MS turned out to have intelligent people explaining infinitely many details of the rationality and openness of OOXML.
In Denmark, we have had a similar document passed in the parliament in 2007. It entailed strong disputes over whether Microsoft's ISO-approved document standard (OOXML) was open or not. The outcome still not clear. But, the danger is that Microsoft's OOXML actually becomes a mandatory standard. This could easily become the outcome of the British government's Procurement Policy Note. Bullet 4 says:
"Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and businesses."
By upgrading to Microsoft's OOXML (docx, xlsx, etc), it becomes the most widespread document format. This implies that government offices must use Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. in order to:
- ensure interoperability
- maximise return (avoiding conversion cost with e.g. ODF)
- avoid lock-in to other formats (e.g. to ODF),
- reduce operational risk (i.e. the Microsoft security package connectied with the office package)
- provide responsive services (citizen and business use Microsoft's document formats).
(I don't say these arguments are true, but that they tend to be accepted politically.)
Making open standards mandatory may imply that Microsoft Office becomes mandatory!
Yes, it is a good decision. But, an important caveat must taken in relation to process that lay down the standard. Microsoft succeeded in making their OOXML an open ISO-standard. But, MS still controls its development thus setting the terms of standardisation in accordance with MS's development interests. This is a hollowing out of open standards through mixing them with "de facto proprietary open standards".
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Good point, but how would you make a standard civil servant understand this. And, please, imagine MS's dull explanations over many pages concerning details of the openness of the 5000 pages standard and its transitional version and reasons for failures and bla bla.... In DK, MS turned out to have intelligent people explaining infinitely many details of the rationality and openness of OOXML.
OOXML is ISO approved. Thus, it is an open standard according to the Procurement Policy Note
In Denmark, we have had a similar document passed in the parliament in 2007. It entailed strong disputes over whether Microsoft's ISO-approved document standard (OOXML) was open or not. The outcome still not clear. But, the danger is that Microsoft's OOXML actually becomes a mandatory standard. This could easily become the outcome of the British government's Procurement Policy Note. Bullet 4 says:
"Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and businesses."
By upgrading to Microsoft's OOXML (docx, xlsx, etc), it becomes the most widespread document format. This implies that government offices must use Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. in order to:
- ensure interoperability
- maximise return (avoiding conversion cost with e.g. ODF)
- avoid lock-in to other formats (e.g. to ODF),
- reduce operational risk (i.e. the Microsoft security package connectied with the office package)
- provide responsive services (citizen and business use Microsoft's document formats).
(I don't say these arguments are true, but that they tend to be accepted politically.)
Making open standards mandatory may imply that Microsoft Office becomes mandatory!
Yes, it is a good decision. But, an important caveat must taken in relation to process that lay down the standard. Microsoft succeeded in making their OOXML an open ISO-standard. But, MS still controls its development thus setting the terms of standardisation in accordance with MS's development interests. This is a hollowing out of open standards through mixing them with "de facto proprietary open standards".