Australia mandates Microsoft's Open Office XML

By Liam Tung on Jan 19, 2011 9:58 AM
Filed under Software

Must have "write" capability.

Australia's Department of Finance has released a desktop policy that required all agencies to adopt Office Open XML as the standard document format - a move that in the short term ensures Microsoft's Office suite remains embedded in government.

The Whole-of-Government Common Operating Environment (WofG COE) Policy [pdf] mandates that an agency's productivity suite "must have the ability to read and write the endorsed file format" that complies with the ECMA-376 version Office Open XML (OOXML) standard.

That particular OOXML standard was rejected by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) because it was littered with Windows-platform dependencies, according to its opponents.

The ODF Alliance, backed by IBM and Google, has warned about the adoption of the ECMA-376 standard by governments.

"The use of ECMA-376 essentially ties the adopter to Microsoft Office," the lobby group warned in October last year in a document entitled "What Government's Need to Know".

That standard, it pointed out, contained "many Windows-platform dependencies" that Microsoft was forced to remove under the ISO process in order to get it approved as ISO-29500 -- a standard that the Microsoft Office 2010 product has so far failed to comply with.

While Microsoft may already dominate public sector productivity suites, the directive issued by Australia's Government Information Management Office [AGIMO] may severely limit agency choices.

Many rival productivity suites have the ability to read and import Microsoft's OOXML format documents, notated by the .docx extension in the case of Word files, but few have the capacity to write in that format.

Unlike a 2009 UK open document format policy which made room for both the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard and OOXML, AGIMO's policy document made no mention of the ODF standard -- the format supported by IBM, Sun Microsystems and Google.

ODF was also the format selected as standard by the National Archives of Australia in 2006.

AGIMO explained that it was settling on OOXML to "facilitate the exchange of information between agencies."

However it appears to leave some room for flexibility, adding that its decision "does not preclude the use of other file formats."

The demand for write capability may hinder Google's future cloud efforts, should it attempt to woo Canberra's agencies to its cloud-based platform as it has in the US.

Applications that only support .docx read capabilities include Apple's iWork, IBM's Lotus Notes, Oracle's OpenOffice.Org and Google Docs, amongst others.

However, some developers have built productivity suites that offer read and write capabilities that support the OOXML format.

The latest release of the non-Oracle version of OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, for example can read and edit Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 formats.

LibreOffice was created by the Document Foundation, which is supported by Google, Novell, Red Hat, Canonical and BrOffice and has on its board longtime OpenOffice.org contributor Charles Schulz.

According to Schulz, that same read-write functionality in Novell's OpenOffice.org was intentionally scuttled between 2007 and 2008 when Microsoft co-opted it to support its OOXML lobbying efforts.

According to Schulz, Microsoft's own productivity suites, Office 2007 and 2010, have yet to meet the ISO-29500 standard -- a fact that may explain why AGIMO has not mandated the more stringent version of the OOXML standard.

Australia mandates Microsoft's Open Office XML

31 comments in this discussion

"Hi John Thanks for continuing Australia's backward steps and ensuring we continue to be the IT backwater that we are so well known for being. What's your next great policy decision? All communicat..."

By mrhavercamp

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Comments: 31

OzBobInv Jan 19, 2011 4:27 PM	A further example of government waste of taxpayers' money. Entrenching what is only at best a second rate system, that costs big dollars to have the programme, is not good policy. In fact, it shows absolute contempt to the Australian people. We have two free systems - ODF and PDF, why can't we use them? Because government policy doesn't allow for free software? Get into the 21st century and stop wasting the little resources Australia has.
oz_ollie Jan 19, 2011 5:34 PM	Thank you AGIMO for proving you have no comprehension of IT in the 21st Century. The documentation standards specified forces all Australian businesses to use Microsoft products to communicate with the Australian Government. Is AGIMO going to supply every Australian business Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office? What a great way to spend tax payers money on foreign products. The person that signed off on this needs sacking, but in typical Canberra public service traditions they'll just move to another department.
John Sheridan Jan 19, 2011 6:38 PM	Hi Liam, I am the First Assistant Secretary at AGIMO responsible for this policy. The new policy does not prefer one vendor over another. It recognises, following extensive consultation across portfolios, that over 99% of government PCs currently use the ECMA-376 standard. This standard has not been chosen exclusively – agencies may also use other formats if they desire. However, to ensure commonality across government, this first iteration of the policy requires that agency desktop environments must be able to read and write ECMA-376. If, over time, due to changes in usage, technology or preferences, another standard is required, the policy can be amended to accommodate such a change. Readers may also note that this part of the policy affects the manner in which documents are exchanged between agencies. The requirements for accessibility (discussed at some length on our blog) mean that documents available to the public through government websites, etc, are published in alternative formats to ensure the needs of citizens are met. These formats typically include HTML, PDF and RTF.
zardoz Jan 19, 2011 6:44 PM	So why not standardise on an open standard instead of one that's only supported by a single monopolistic vendor. ODF comes to mind. The OOXML spec is 14,000 pages long. As Winston Churchill said of another document: "The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read."
echidna Jan 19, 2011 6:53 PM	John, it's simple enough to amend the policy, but in the future it may not be so simple to convert the documents that are in ECMA-376 format - something that would have to happen to ensure the information in the documents is still accessible. Starting with an open standard format would make that (let's face it - probable) future conversion alot simpler as you are working with a file format, the specification for which is freely available.
wjc Jan 19, 2011 7:03 PM	Remember the Australian Federal Government GOSIP? Those were the days when it was - well, shall we say - NOT ALLOWED to specify an ICT system that was proprietary or only reasonably met by one or two suppliers. This decision seems to stop the procurement of any Open Source system (LINUX, BSD, etc.) for our Federal Government's own agency/department usage and thus locks out a major market for the development of Australia's own industry in the office systems area to meet OUR Federal Government needs. Oh, well - we just continue to dig the place up and sell it! (Remember - Government and Defence purchasing gave us the ICT industry we have today - but - of course, in the USA.)
lightweight Jan 19, 2011 7:13 PM	I'm deeply saddened by this shortsighted move by Australia. I can only hope my country's government doesn't do somethign equally daft. OOXML is a hypothetical standard. John Sheridan, if you were sold "Microsoft's OOXML" as an open standard, you have some reading to do. I suggest finding someone who gets the nitty gritty details to advise you if you're not able to do so. I suggest you start here: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/11/asking-right-questions-about-office.html The bottom line is that Microsoft OOXML and the ISO standard also referred to as "OOXML" are not the same thing. I'm afraid, John, that you've either been sold a lemon (and I encourage you to return it for a full refund on behalf of the hapless Australian taxpayer) or you're pandering to the entrenched but flawed status quo rather than exercising vision and prudence. I hope it's the former. If not, shame on you.
lightweight Jan 19, 2011 7:16 PM	To clarify my point about "hypothetical standard", Microsoft doesn't even support their own ISO Standard (which they forced through the ISO process). They support a proprietary "transitional" version. Any interoperability offered by others is due to specific contractual arrangements with MS or reverse engineering (which is illegal in many jurisdictions, thanks to daft laws made in the US and propagated elsewhere due to its diplomatic influence). That is not real open standards based interoperability. Because no one supports the actual ISO OOXML standard as written, it's a purely hypothetical standard.
MadTom1999 Jan 19, 2011 8:00 PM	While its an incredibly stupid regulation inspired by ignorance or corruption you can mitigate it in the sense that you only need one copy of MS office in your whole company to achive compliance. You can set it up to act as a service for converting your globally interchangeable ODF documents to the more restricted and proprietary version required by this banal regulation.
topherb Jan 19, 2011 9:59 PM	Perhaps "over 99% of [Federal] government PCs currently use the ECMA-376 standard", but what about communicating with the State Government Departments who have only just managed to implement Office 2003?!
Francis Jan 20, 2011 6:20 AM	I may be a little confused here, but who is the Minister ultimately responsible? was it our old friend Conboy again?
BrettWinterford Jan 20, 2011 8:21 AM	Thanks John for engaging with us, much appreciated. Its the 'write' capability that is of most concern. There are plenty of modern office productivity programs that can read .docx, for example, but mandating that Government systems can 'write' to such a closed-shop standard is a big issue. That said, I completely understand the basic aims of the strategy. A lead agency - in the case of Microsoft products I believe it is Defence? - can lean on the scale of whole-of-Government pricing to drive better deals from the vendors agencies 'inevitably' use. I'm all for that, except the part about the policy effectively ensuring Microsoft is an inevitable choice.
robl Jan 20, 2011 2:06 PM	The only tool that I have come across that can successfully read and write .docx format files is Microsoft office. I have tried using Open Office but when sharing the updates of a document with people using MS Office and myself using Open Office has regularly resulted in corrupted document formatting etc. Unfortunately this decision just means that all people and organisations who wish to share documents with the Australian government will be forced to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 or newer. This is a terrific win for Microsoft in Australia as it is going to force the sale of many thousands of MS Office license. However it is not such a good decision for the rest of the Australian population.
Ace Jan 20, 2011 2:19 PM	I believe that dealing with any enterprise or government in the last 15 years has meant using Microsoft Office in any case @robl. Office 2003 will also do the trick in most cases too. It can read docx dopcuments, and anything later can read 2003 docs. That said, I don't find it very ideal to be using a OOXML when a more widely accepted standard has been in existence for quite some time. To backup Bretts comment, it's great that John from the AGIMO is prepared to engage and clarify comments on forums such as this. I appreciate it too.
John Sheridan Jan 20, 2011 5:36 PM	Thanks Brett and @Ace for the kind words. @robl - Please do not buy Microsoft Office as a consequence of this decision. It does not affect how businsesses or individuals exchange documents with government agencies. It does not change the way in which agencies are required to publish documents online. It only affects how agencies interoperate. Put simply, the decision requires agencies, when next they do a major SOE update, to include in that SOE an office (deliberate use of lower case o) suite that can read and write in ECMA-376. (As an aside, Wikipedia, which I know is not perfect, has an interesting comparison of office suites here - http://bit.ly/18bX2V). This ensures that agencies will converge on a single standard (deliberate use again of lower case s in standard). It does not limit them to that application. 99.5% of government PCs already use a variant of Windows - XP, Vista or 7. Only 1268 do not. MS Office is used on more than 86% of the PCs. IBM Lotus Symphony is used on just under 13%, with Corel WordPerfect, Apple Office 2004/2008 and Open Office each being used on less than 1% of the PCs. In the survey we conducted last year, we asked agencies about their upgrade plans. Windows 7, Office 2007 and Office 2010 were identified as major upgrade paths. No other office suites were identified for upgrade. Nothing has been purchased as a consequence of these decisions (not even any lemons @lightweight). Due to its Microsoft Volume Sourcing Agreement, the government already has the licences it needs.
BrownieBoy Jan 20, 2011 6:41 PM	@John, > Nothing has been purchased as a consequence of these > decisions ..... Due to its Microsoft Volume Sourcing > Agreement, the government already has the licences it > needs Microsoft lets you have that Volume Sourcing Agreement for free, does it, John? No, it actually charges you a truck load of money for that particular privilege, does it not? And that's my money, John, of which I'm just about to hand over another large chunk to the Federal Govt. What's that you say? "But we have to have that agreement for Windows, Office, Exchange [fill in other low-quality products here], so it's not like we're spending anything that anybody else isn't"? Therein lies the root of the problem.
John Sheridan Jan 20, 2011 8:26 PM	Hi @BrownieBoy, The government had already purchased sufficient licences under the VSA. The VSA has already saved $51m off standard government pricing in its first 2 years of operation and is on track to save over $80m in its four years of operation. Decisions on software purchasing, like all Commonwealth Government Procurement, are guided by the principle of best value for money and consider not just licences but the total cost of ownership, including support, interoperability, etc over the life of the product. The VSA does not mandate the use of Microsoft products - just the manner in which they are purchased by FMA Act agencies. Regards, John
lightweight Jan 20, 2011 8:54 PM	John, Can you point me to the documented comparison where you determined that purchasing software from a monopoly provider was better "value for money" (considering everything you mentioned) than, for example, OpenOffice? I'm supremely confident that in terms of interoperability (i.e. via open standards, as opposed to "Microsoft OOXML" which is demonstrably not an open standard, or any standard at all), total cost of ownership, etc. there will be NO CONTEST, OpenOffice will be better value for money. If you consider the cost of support, I guarantee you that those vendors currently supporting MS Office for government agencies will be able to shift their energies to OpenOffice in a millisecond if they know that's where you're heading. If they kick and scream, it's just because they might not be getting as many kickba... er "marketing co-payments" from the open source OpenOffice/LibreOffice crowd as they did from Microsoft (who, after all, has monopoly profits to "sprinkle around").
lightweight Jan 20, 2011 9:04 PM	Also, John, if you're "saving" $51 million, what is the total bill, so we know what percentage that is? How much better would the voters like you if you could say that you saved all the license fees? Not some. Not $51m. All of them. I suspect that'd look pretty good. A possible downside might be that you and other managers would be managing smaller budgets given the fact that a VSA is no longer necessary. I guess that mightn't look as good when personal advancement opportunities came along, but I'm sure that your demonstrable ability to eliminate (not "reduce" by some small arbitrary amount on a product with at least an 80% profit margin) spending in these difficult times - while vastly increasing the government's freedom in making future digital technology decisions might offset that. Am I wrong?
firstlast3 Jan 20, 2011 9:53 PM	@John Sheridan Hi John - like some of the other commenters here, I would like to sincerely thank you for posting; it's great to see direct engagement from the Government on this issue. Below, I outline two situations that trouble me, and I suspect perhaps other commenters in light of this announcement. I'd appreciate your comments, because that would help me know whether I've misunderstood what this plan affects practically. Firstly, I use Linux, and unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't offer much in the way of support for Microsoft Office on that platform. Supposing I would like to collaborate with a Government department over email - would it be acceptable for me to send a .ODT document? Could I reasonably expect the person receiving it to be able to open it without, say, downloading a copy of a product like OpenOffice? Here, I am thinking of the situation where a document goes back and forward and gets edited a few times, and let's say for the sake of argument that the Commonwealth employee wants to embed images and doesn't want to use something like HTML. Is the adoption of this new standard going to affect my sending documents to the Government by limiting what the average Commonwealth employee can receive? Secondly, I sometimes develop tools which modify or generate new documents. Supposing that I'd like to generate a document (using a script for example) on that Linux computer I mentioned earlier - say again its an ODT document containing a report, for example. Can I rely on those using the Commonwealth's computers to be able to access and understand that document? I understand from your comments that the departments will not be limited by the standard. Does that mean that a Commonwealth employee receiving a document in a (non-proprietary) standard such as ODT would be free to just download and install a copy of OpenOffice (or the Word plugin) to read the document, or do you typically limit the standard builds to a core set of tools and disallow new ones?
John Sheridan Jan 20, 2011 11:32 PM	Hi @firstlast3, I wasn't sure I knew the answer immediately, so I downloaded OpenOffice (to my home computer), and created an odt file. I opened it successfully in Office 2010 at home. From OpenOffice, I emailed it to myself at work, logged on remotely and opened it from the email in Office (Word) 2007. I also noted that OpenOffice offered me the option to email it as a .doc file as well. Now this experience may vary from agency to agency but it seems to pass this (very simple and non-scientific) test case to answer your first question. I'm not sure I understand your second question completely - it seems to be saying can you expect all government users to be able to read ODT files natively. The answer would be no, but as the test above shows, Word 2007 (as it's installed at my agency) and Word 2010 seem to be able to do so. Your third question seems to ask the same question a slightly different way. APS members, like employees of very many major enterpirses, are generally not now able to install any application or plug-in they like. I suspect that most of the 186-odd SOEs across agencies prevent this now. The COE policy isn't changing this, rather it is directing a convergence onto fewer SOE versions. Regards John Disclaimer - Dear readers, I didn't carry out an exhaustive test, just a simple one to satisfy my curiosity. Don't beat me up about it unless you really have to.
BrettWinterford Jan 21, 2011 12:15 AM	@lightweight - I'd ask that you refrain from personal attacks on the forum - your arguments will resonate better without them. cheers, Brett.
firstlast3 Jan 21, 2011 1:12 AM	@John Sheridan Thanks so much for doing this. For the benefit of those reading outside our time-zone that have not noticed the time on the post, John is working well out-of-hours. It sounds like Word can do the job of opening ODT files. Would it avoid some difficulties to just specify that the OpenDocument format is supported as part of the minimum platform, perhaps in addition to ECMA-376? [Incidentally, I have taken your disclaimer seriously, and naturally I don't expect that you can answer right now. I would be very interested to hear AGIMO's inclination toward supporting both standards in the pursuit of interoperabiity though!] In my second question, yes I was asking whether I could expect all government users to be able to read ODT files natively. I am a bit concerned about the stability of the OOXML standard and in particular, what might happen when (if?) the move to ISO-29500 happens (has it happened yet?). Could there be people emailing ISO-29500 documents and thinking that everybody has software to read them, but there not being software available to read them? Incompatibilities are a real issue, since any perceived incompatibility with Government can be expected to reverberate through private industry. My concern above would be redundant if public facing Commonwealth employees could all transparently open ODT documents (as you can). I think this because, at worst, the public could download (or for the real troublemakers, compile) a free copy of OpenOffice and use that to author documents. My concern may also be redundant if Commonwealth employees could/would easily download and install OpenOffice themselves; which is what the third question was really about. If I understand you correctly, a Commonwealth employee would not be able to download OpenOffice to read an ODT file sent to them. What would the next step be in that case? Would the Commonwealth employee ask the citizen to send the document/spreadsheet in some other format? If so, which format might you see them requesting, and why?
gbollard Jan 21, 2011 10:14 AM	This is an appalling decision showing once again a lack of understanding of office technology. It looks like the old adage of "nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft" is at work again here. In this case, cross-platform and cross-software open standards have been rejected in favor of a mostly "closed standard" supported by only one piece of software. Why couldn't we follow the european examples which would open our computing standards to a common file format and not tie us into another single-vendor solution.
John Sheridan Jan 21, 2011 12:42 PM	Hi again @firstlast3 If agencies have a requirement for another office suite that doesn't meet the ECMA-376 requirement, then they are not prevented from installing it for some or all of their staff. As standards evolve, the COE policy will evolve - that's how it has been designed. My experience is that people who go to the trouble of sending an unsolicited document to an agency very rarely just wait for something to happen. Most such submissions are also covered by an email or similar so I am not sure your second scenarion would occur often. If a business demand for reading odt documents arises, then I would expect agencies to react to it - and, indeed, we would probably need to amend the policy as well. I don't have statistics on the usage of non-Microsoft Office office suites by the Australian public, so it's hard to determine demand for such an option. Regards John
John Sheridan Jan 21, 2011 3:54 PM	See our reopened post on this at our blog http://agimo.govspace.gov.au/2011/01/21/back-to-the-future-another-chance-to-influence-coe-development/
lightweight Jan 21, 2011 6:02 PM	It's fair to say that a government employee talking about how he achieved a $51million discount off... an undisclosed total price is far less than useful information. The alternative to the VSA - giving all this business to Microsoft's monopoly - is to pay $0 for the roughly equivalent functionality offered by Open/LibreOffice AND gain the benefit of a truly open standard (ODF) and the freedom of open source which would give Australian developers the opportunity to improve the software for the benefit of all, no doubt for a small fraction of the VSA's cost. That alternative would save the AU taxpayer something no doubt much greater than $51 million. As such, this sort of decision making really gets my dander up. So @BrettWinterford and @JohnSheridan - apologies if I caused offence - it's borne of frustration. I'm amazed, John, that - given your above comments - that you're only just now testing OpenOffice. I would've hoped that your decision was based a well constructed business case tied to actual large scale software tests over many months. Otherwise, it sure seems a lot like a rubber stamping exercise. John, it would be great if you could share how much the VSA is actually worth, and over what time frame. Otherwise, we can only guess what a "$51 million savings" actually means. Perhaps we assume you've achieved a 10% savings, so your taxpayers are actually paying $450 million to Microsoft... Given that you could, instead, be using Open/LibreOffice at no cost, and be using that $450 million for the benefit of Australians, I can imagine quite a few people in Oz might not be too happy about your decision or the apparently not-so-rigourous basis on which it's been made. I wonder how long it'll be before some conscientious Australian govt employee leaks the actual VSA agreement (and its equivalents here in NZ and elsewhere in the world) to Wikileaks... It'll be very interesting to see how it's received. All I can say is that it can't happen soon enough.
Pilotyoda Jan 22, 2011 11:33 AM	I am singularly unimpressed. My employer had to dump one of Microsoft's products because the stability of the (health industry) system would have been compromised by upgrading to introduce a new feature required, and the tremendous cost of upgrading to the latest version of MicroSoft's OS, server systems and apps and then do extensive testing to ensure no impacts on the medical applications. The work-around was to install Firefox - dead easy, free and no impact. However, most of our suppliers are in Europe so messages from Oz to the EU are either email form or ODF as that is the standard there. While John's quick test shows a degree of openness, he did not demonstrate the accessibility of documents formatted in OOXML / ECMA-376 and required to be read by ISO-29500 software. This includes Open Office which is used in many countries where there is a mandate to use free, open source, software and not spend $Billions of taxpayers money to Microsoft on an ongoing basis. I would love to be told how much money this country sends to Microsoft each year, but a "back-of-the-envelope" calculation suggests easily $1billion+ /pa just for PC's in the private domain. Then there is those platforms powered by that other company using a "half-eaten piece of fruit" as a logo; and business and government software budgets which add to that figure. This does not include specialised industry or custom built software. Seems to me that we loose 3 times: Once in terms of "language barrier" with the rest of the world; again in terms of balance of payments/$AU going offshore; and finally in terms of costs siphoning dollars from other essential spending within Australia. Money that could be better spent on Health, Education, Community services, etc. In fact, my estimate in software costs suggests parity with the annual costs of building the NBN. Now there is a thought! If Abbott/Turnbull take over then mandate Open Source software and NO filter, we can have our NBN AND reduce our trade deficit!!
DMA Jan 24, 2011 8:29 AM	Hello everyone I was surprised to read some of this. There is a low cost non Microsoft product that fully complies with the requirements and has the ability to read and write the endorsed file format" that complies with the ECMA-376 version Office Open XML (OOXML) standard. The product, although not very well known, is the Award Winning 'SoftMaker Office 2010'which in may users opinion is, true to its German origin, better than Microsoft Office. The product is offered Free to ALL genuine educational institutions, and to ALL educators employed in them. It is offered to all genuine students for $10ex and to industry for $79.95ex for a 3 license package which reduces it to a mere $26.65ex. A 12 month Trial version is also offered for $20.00ex with a rebate scheme for people who convert to a full license within a period. So Whilst I agree with all comments about open systems and open source, I had to highlight the fact that there is at least one affordable alternative.
Graeme Harrison (prof at-symbol post.harvard.edu) Jan 25, 2011 6:47 PM	I have exchanged comments with First Secretary John previously (on IT News) regarding how AGIMO has achieved so little in helping Australia move to Open Source. Now again, we hear that the primary reason for endorsing the proprietary Microsoft approach is because the agencies currently use it. If AGIMO is following the agencies, and providing no leadership, little positive change can be expected. Or at least the maximum savings is the one-time $80m savings from volume purchase agreements, rather than the $300m+ pa in payments to Microsoft for products which have an equivalent free version in Open Source. I think the role of AGIMO should be to set out a road map to get Australia off proprietary lock-in solutions, and onto truly open standards and open source products, as well as achieving savings in other areas (best practice, shared learning, shared hosting, shared backup strategies etc). I think Archives has got it right by standardising on Open Document. Aside from the issue that Microsoft does not comply with its own standard, one needs to examine what AGIMO is endorsing. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) adopted Open Document as a standard. That was appropriate, as the product is a true open-interchange format, not derived from a binary dump, as has been almost all Microsoft formats (except RTF which they kept changing). Open Office was promoted by parties who are not trying to sell you the next version, so had no interest in lock-in. For the best explanation of Vendor Lock-In see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in And to see that multiple-felon Microsoft has a very poor history of adhering to standards, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish The European Union came to a very different result from AGIMO, noting that with Microsoft there was no continuity over years for text documents which needed to be kept 'as formatted text'. The famous 'Valoris Report' was the review of open document vs M$ Office formats, seen at http://www.europa.eu.int/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=17982 And Microsoft's response to the Valoris Report is at: http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=17984 So after twenty years of refusing to comply with any standard, Microsoft found its MS Office about to be forced out of European government use, and quite likely out of US government contracts. So it was time for some dirty tricks. Microsoft bribed many delegates of national standards organisations to get the necessary votes at the ISO to get its own cobbled-together version approved. The details of the corruption and unethical behaviour is detailed at: http://www.noooxml.org/irregularities Most serious observers see the Microsoft response ('Office Open') in response to widespread uptake of 'Open Office' as conveniently confusing. And they see the claim that Microsoft has an 'open standard' as hogwash, as the primary requirements for an open standard is that it be driven by a committee of experts from a wide variety of vendors, be vendor-neutral and be accepted by ISO as stable. The Microsoft standard fails on this test. Microsoft will clearly want to 'enhance' the standard, with a view to killing vendor interoperability. If AGIMO was so hopeless as to not set a roadmap for migration to open source and open standards, then it should at least remain silent. By coming out and endorsing a proprietary solution, AGIMO acts as a retardant in the move to open standards. John seems like a nice-enough guy, and it is great to see any public servant put his head on the block with respect to any government decision... but I think he is plain wrong in helping Microsoft enhance their lock-in of Australian government agencies. He is not alone. The NSW DET was similarly short-sighted when they claimed that they would put all school children's laptops into a Microsoft-only environment, as the licences were free to them, and they thought they had no other obligations to the next generation of IT users in Australia. There are only two industries which term 'customers' as 'users' - the illegal drug industry and ICT. In both, the first use is always free, as the supplier is trying to capture them for life. I have used Open Office for six years, and I believe there is no valid reason why it could not be the standard for all government office computing. I too was a bit shocked to hear that the person justifying why the government would go with the proprietary solution, has only just now downloaded Open Office. I hope in years to come, Australia manages to follow the leadership of all the countries which are standardising on Open Office and Open Source as their preferred solutions. Functionality is almost never removed from Open Source solutions, whereas with Microsoft products, if you do not keep migrating to exactly the latest products, you are without support, and APIs can be dropped without notice at any time. The Microsoft response is that you should re-write your application to use their latest tools, rather than expecting existing tools to still work for more than a year or two. This approach leads to far higher IT costs, as nothing can be nailed down as the foundations of the house keep changing about as quickly as the upper levels can be built. And don't get me started on all the time wasted on licensing issues, which disappear with Open Source. Open Office is far easier to deploy and reinstall (eg when hard disks fail etc) than ANY licensed product. Of course the agencies will prefer their status quo, but if AGIMO is not to provide leadership, it should at least not seek to lock-in the status quo.
mrhavercamp Jan 28, 2011 12:18 AM	Hi John Thanks for continuing Australia's backward steps and ensuring we continue to be the IT backwater that we are so well known for being. What's your next great policy decision? All communication must be via iPhones. It is exactly this reason why I gave up trying to lobby australian committees and government on voting against ISO-29500 a long time ago. Because it's an Ecma standard does not mean it is an open so you've effectively locked yourself into microsoft-only license agreements for the long term. Not that any of this matters; everything is moving to the web anyway and OOXML will be consigned to the history garbage heap. What you've guaranteed though is your data will be useless 10 years from now. An amazingly poor decision but unsurprising considering all the talent in this country moves OS.