Position Papers: Open Document Format

Issue Summary

Have you ever written a document — a letter, a memo, a piece of creative writing — that you were particularly pleased with, and then went back a few years later to reuse parts of it, and found that you could not use the original document because you did not have the application that created it? This is because the document and the application that created it are tightly linked together. This is not an isolated problem: it is happening all over the world, and as documents are increasingly being migrated to electronic form, this problem only gets worse.

For governments, this is a real problem. On one hand, migrating documents to electronic form enables enhanced services and efficiencies: better capture, storage and retrieval of critical information, coordination of key activities, and communication across departments. On the other hand, governments (and their citizens) need to be able to access these documents now and into the future, without being locked in to a single software application or vendor.

The culprit, or salvation, in all of this is the document format; something you probably have never thought about. A document format is the way a document is displayed and stored, and it has everything to do with whether a document can be read or modified by another application. If a document format is closed or proprietary, then only the application that created it can open and edit it perfectly. However, if the document format is a truly open standard, approved by a recognized standards body and freely available to be used by anyone, then any application that implements that standard can open and edit the document. This means that if you use an open document format, then your documents will never be locked up again, because you are not limited to using the one application that created the document in order to read or use that document in the future.

Sun's Position

OpenDocument Format (ODF), a recently approved international (ISO) standard, helps solve this problem.

• Information Ownership: Governments today may no longer truly own their documents; they may lose the ability to access, modify and use archived documents at some future date. ODF, as an open standard, can ensure that a document saved today will not be technologically locked tomorrow. A government should never be dependent on a single technology to use and reuse its own information.


• Access: Worries over long term access to documents are real. Governments and their citizens are needlessly struggling to open older documents. ODF's entirely open nature solves these problems.


• Interoperability: ODF helps separate the document (information) from the application that created it. The document can then be processed by other applications seamlessly and with fidelity, without interference of any proprietary technology or vendor restrictions.


• Competition: ODF is a truly open standard that levels the playing field for multiple software providers to compete on functionality and price, based upon a common standard.


• Choice: Governments are often tied to the upgrade paths, strategies and pricing decisions of a single technology vendor, sometimes without reasonable access to viable alternatives. ODF provides greater choice by enabling competition among vendors, including both proprietary and open source applications.


• Lower Cost: Applications that implement ODF will provide a variety of solutions (including open source solutions) at competitive prices, because ODF can be implemented royalty free in any office productivity application. This will also help citizens who will not have to buy a specific application to access government information — indeed, free-of-charge solutions are already available.


• Innovation and Jobs: ODF provides a platform-independent format on which anyone can build and distribute new applications and services. This benefits the local economy and creates jobs.


• Preservation of Cultural Heritage: As more and more documents of potentially historical significance are created and stored in digital form, it is essential that governments retain the ability to archive these documents and files in a format that will be freely accessible today and for future generations.


• Emergency Management: The need for open standards is also compelling in the context of emergency preparedness. When the tsunami struck Thailand, its government and responding domestic and international agencies were unable to share and secure access to information essential to the relief effort because each used different data and document formats. Public access to essential government services, in emergency situations or otherwise, should never be restricted to users of one brand of software

The promotion and usage of ODF is growing rapidly, demonstrating the global need for freedom of control and choice in document applications. Many enlightened governments across the globe are making policy decisions to move to ODF. These ODF and open standard policy leaders include Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Extremadura [Spain], Malaysia, Massachusetts, Norway, and Thailand. Some of these governments and many others are already successfully using applications that support ODF.

Businesses are responding to the needs of governments and their customers, and implementing ODF in their products. A variety of ODF-based applications are in the market today, ranging from open source solutions like OpenOffice.org and Koffice to commercial software solutions like Sun's StarOffice and IBM's Workplace to web-based applications like Google Docs & Spreadsheets. A complete list is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_applications_supporting_OpenDocument.

The ODF Alliance was launched in March, 2006, to help solve the problem of continued access to documents. It is now comprised of over 300 members (including commercial entities, government agencies, and non-profit organizations) from over 40 countries.

Recommendations

• Run pilot projects to explore the implementation of ODF-supporting applications and prove the cost-savings tobe attained
• Adopt government policies that require open standards and specifically adopt software applications that implement ODF
• Require support for ODF in future government software procurement
• Insist that office applications used in government offices implement ODF as the default for saving documents

For More Information

ODF Alliance
OASIS ODF Resources