News briefs: Massachusetts mulls move to open source documents

Network World
September 05, 2005 12:05 AM ET

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State offices in Massachusetts could soon be rid of proprietary digital documents, if a recent proposal to move to open source document formats is approved. The proposal, drafted by the Information Technology Division of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, would have all documents in offices run by the state moved from Microsoft Office, IBM Lotus Notes, WordPerfect and other proprietary formats by 2007. The proposal calls for documents to be moved to the OpenDocument file format standard, an open source, XML-based file format. State officials say part of the idea is to preserve state documents in a format that can be read in the future. Another goal is to make state documents available to a wider range of users. Peter Quinn, CIO for Massachusetts, says the state has not committed to any office software, whether the open source OpenOffice platform, Microsoft Office or other applications.
The 20 largest U.S. government IT contracts likely to be awarded in fiscal year 2006 total $250 billion, and vendors still have time to bid on many of those jobs, according to Input, a Virginia firm that assists private companies with federal contracts. The $250 billion compares with $184.9 billion in U.S. government IT contracts awarded in fiscal year 2004. Fiscal year 2006, which starts Oct. 1, might represent the best year ever for small IT vendors looking to do business with the U.S. government. Among IT contracts scheduled to be awarded is a government-wide contract as part of the Alliant project administered by the U.S. General Services Administration, worth up to an estimated $50 billion over 10 years, for a range of IT services, such as biometrics, communications and security. Input estimates that the agency will issue a request for proposals for the Alliant project contract before the end of the 2005 fiscal year.

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