The Commonwealth’s review of the format, however, could spark other states to re-evaluate their failed legislation
The decision by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to consider adopting a second open document format could lead to integration issues but could also help revive similar legislation in other states.
Last week, Massachusetts proposed adopting the Open XML standard to go along with it use of the OpenDocument Format (ODF). The state presented its Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) 4.0 for public review and listed under the draft’s major revisions “Ecma-376 Office Open XML File Formats.”
The draft is open to public comment until July 20. The final draft, which will become official state policy, is expected at the end of the month, Massachusetts officials say.
Open XML was derived from Microsoft’s Office OpenXML (ooXML), which is the default file format in Office 2007. The specification was approved as a standard in December by Ecma, an international membership-based standards organization for information and communication systems.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
“[Open XML] does meet our criteria for an open standard,” says Bethann Pepoli, acting CIO of the Massachusetts Information Technology Division. “There is industry support for the format since it was approved in December.”
The industry support, however, is in the form of translators, and critics of Open XML say that will cause integration issues.
“Those companies are ‘implementing’ not through native support but through a so-called ooXML-ODF translator tool that is still in beta for spreadsheets and presentation and is nowhere near an adequate level of development even for text documents,” says Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance.
Open XML Translator 1.0 was released in February for free as an open source project on Source Forge, the software development Web site. A second beta of the OpenXML/ODF Translator for Excel and PowerPoint was release in May.
In July 2006, Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s business division product management group, acknowledged in a document titled “A Foundation for the New World of Documents” that “although file translation may not result in perfect document fidelity because of format and product differences, it is the most effective way to offer interoperability in a world where multiple file formats will need to coexist.”
Massachusetts’s Pepoli says the state has not seen any integration issues to date but that the state will add guidelines if any major issues develop.
The guidelines in ETRM 4.0 say Open XML in Massachusetts can be used for office documents such as text documents (.docx), spreadsheets (.xlsx), and presentations (.pptx) but is not restricted to those document types.
Last month, the Danish Parliament began to tackle the same integration issue when it decided to open a one-year test, beginning on Jan. 1, 2008, on adopting Microsoft’s ooXML in addition to ODF.
During the test, the government will require new products bought by agencies to support at least one of the document standards. The government also will study document exchange, including the use of converters to change document formats.
Analysts say the second look at Open XML shows that users are being pragmatic given Microsoft’s dominance in the office productivity applications market.
“I think Massachusetts is bowing to practicality here a little,” says Chris LeTocq, principal analyst of Guernsey Research. “Is OpenXML going to be out there and used by hundreds of thousands of the people whom the government workers are going to have to exchange documents with? Yes it is.”
LeTocq says that may lead to the reopening of legislation killed or shelved in other states. Massachusetts passed its open-document measure by executive policy decision in 2005 and is the only state with such a mandate.
“If you look at Massachusetts as a leader in open document adoption, this says they have looked at the practicality, the effectiveness [of Open XML], or maybe they had to re-evaluate, maybe they saw something they didn’t see before that put pressure on them. Or maybe, at the end of the day, Massachusetts has a deal with Microsoft from a cost standpoint that we have not heard about,” says LeTocq.
A spokesman for California Assemblyman Mark Leno says the open-document format bill he introduced did not have the votes but would be taken up again in next year’s session.
“The bill doesn’t specify formats; it simply gives criteria for the formats,” the spokesman says. Given the state’s criteria, however, California could reasonably conclude Open XML is a fit.
In Minnesota, where electronic documents are under study by the state’s IT department, the format issue isn’t even on the table yet, so what happens in Massachusetts could be relevant once that discussion takes place.
“We did not even use the term open document format because we do not want to presume an outcome of the study. The 2008 legislative session may review this issue when it returns on February 18,” said Sen. Don Betzold in an e-mail response to Network World.
ODF proponents take aim at Microsoft
ODF supporters are already bashing the Massachusetts review of Open XML.
“ooXML looks backward, while ODF is an international ISO standard, and is forward looking. The public understands this, too, as nearly 15,000 people opposing ooXML have signed an online petition circulated by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure,” says Bob Sutor, IBM’s vice president of open source. “We look forward to seeing the public discussion in the Commonwealth.”
IBM was the only Ecma member to vote in December against standardizing Open XML.
Massachusetts has been at the forefront of a movement to shun proprietary document formats in favor of open standards, most notably ODF.
In crafting the proposal to consider adding Open XML to its list, Massachusetts cited Open XML support in Microsoft Office 2007, OpenOffice Novell Edition, and NeoOffice 2.1. The ETRM 4.0 draft also notes that Corel has announced Open XML support for WordPerfect 2007, and that Microsoft’s Office Compatibility Pack lets Office 2003, XP and 2000 translate documents to and from Open XML Format for text, presentation and spreadsheet documents.
But the state says adoption of Open XML is not a done deal.
“Someone could submit a comment and we could make a review of ETRM and make changes,” Pepoli says. Those changes could include eliminating Open XML from ETRM in the final draft.
Massachusetts, however, is already migrating its agencies to XML-based office document formats. The majority of agencies currently have Microsoft Office 2003 deployed, according to the ETRM 4.0 draft.
Massachusetts is currently using the plug-in technology to support ODF while it considers way to serve people with disabilities that need magnifiers not supported by open office applications that use ODF.
