Yesterday the Minister of the Cabinet Office in the UK, Francis Maude, announced that the UK government adopts the Open Document Format (ODF) standard for documents that are presented for collaboration and interaction. Two other standards, PDF/A and HTML, are chosen for viewing government information.
I admire the UK government for this
decision. ODF is the established standard for documents. It is used
in OpenOffice , in LibreOffice, and also in Microsoft Office. Gone are the days of the battle
about OOXML and the debates about ODF versus OOXML. That's the stuff
of last decade. The UK government now made the step into the future
direction supporting and requiring an open standard for document
formats that is widely available and implemented in a number of
competing products and solutions.
I wish other governments would be fast
in following this example. With increasing online collaboration, with
using Cloud technologies, with moving to increased automation, the
use of ODF is the right move for promoting interoperability,
competition and choice.
I have been using ODF implementations
for many years now. I am working with odt, odp and ods files on a
daily basis. I am highly satisfied – and I am sure that clear
decisions in favour of ODF will push further innovation around ODF.
So great news from the UK. I hope they
will spread fast and wide.
