Commonwealth’s approval of Open XML keeps its in cross-hairs of debate over open document formats.
Massachusetts has been a lightning rod and a leader in the movement for governments to embrace open document formats and neither of those roles change with Wednesday’s announcement that it will adopt Open XML.
While the Commonwealth collected 460 comments in July during its public comments period on the proposal to adopt Ecma-376 Office Open XML (ooXML), the reverberations of its final decision to embrace the format stretches far and wide from people with disabilities, open source advocates, vendors and other state governments.
The reaction is not all negative especially given Massachusetts’ earlier acceptance of the Open Document Format (ODF) has put the open document issue on the world map.
But it is the contrast of where Massachusetts started, with the idea of banning Microsoft Office and its proprietary lock-in, and where it has ended up, embracing a format originally developed by Microsoft and supported in its Office 2007 program, that has drawn so much attention.
Along the way, the debate saw Massachusetts burn through two CIOs, with the first, Peter Quinn, quitting after the burden of the debate became “disruptive” and “harmful.”
Today, nearly a year after Quinn’s replacement, Louis Gutierrez, left, the state still only has an acting CIO.
“Massachusetts has performed a real service in getting [open documents] on the map,” says Andy Updegrove, a lawyer, Linux Foundation board member and Massachusetts resident, in giving his glass-half-full assessment. “But it may be a bit like Moses on the mountain top. They may have seen the promise land but they never entered it.”
Updegrove say Massachusetts was a pioneer in adopting ODF but made a mistake in adopting ooXML for a number of reasons including its development roots within Microsoft, its native support in only a single product (Office 2007), and the fact that it teeters on the brink of rejection as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which standardized ODF with little fanfare.
The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), which represents the United States, still hasn’t decided whether to vote in favor of ooXML in the Sept. 2 ISO vote that would make the format an international standard.
“Massachusetts rushed the process,” said Updegrove. “The whole world was looking at us and I think we let the world down.”
In fact, comments from non-Massachusetts residents were sprinkled throughout the 852 pages of comments collected by the Commonwealth on its Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) 4.0, which included the Open XML proposal.
“Whatever the state decides on this issue will set a precedence for the other states to follow. And I believe the state of Massachusetts must not compromise the original idea that it should be able to have access to information stored in non-proprietary formats,” wrote Joe Waliga, who identified himself as a “United States citizen.”
Jutta Treviranus and Stephen A. Hockema of the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto assailed the shortcomings of the ooXML in regards to people with disabilities.
“We feel obligated to write on behalf of people there with disabilities who, we believe, will be severely disadvantaged by the proposed change,” the pair said. “We believe that the change, if adopted, would set a precedent that could have significant detrimental ramifications outside of Massachusetts as well.”
The pair presented a study that concluded that Open XML is “designed in such a way that it will be impossible to develop technologies to assist persons with certain common disabilities in accessing the content. In particular, a key finding is that documents composed in Office Open XML that contain Forms or Tables will not be electronically accessible; nor will presentation slides.”
Many users made a simple statement by attaching their comments within documents saved in ODF.
Vendors, however, took a more measured approach in their comment submissions, such as IBM and Sun, which have adopted ODF.
Mike Rhodin, the general manager of IBM’s Lotus Software division, which is based in Massachusetts, recommended the prudent approach would be not to recognize ooXML as an open file format.
“Rather, we recommend that you instead call for harmonization between the existing open standard, ODF (implemented in over 30 applications) and ooXML (implemented fully by only one vendor to date).”
Sun’s Carl Cargill, director of corporate standards, wrote to the state’s Information Technology Division (ITD), “We believe the inclusion of a second document format standard, with known interoperability issues with your existing standard is premature. ECMA 376 is only now undergoing an objective assessment of its ability to meet its stated goals of interoperability and enabling competitive implementations.”
While there were plenty of concerns, others professed full support for the direction Massachusetts is taking.
“As a Massachusetts resident and a software engineer I take this opportunities [sic] to congratulate ITD for its continuing effort to pave the way in adopting consistent architectural frameworks and defining standards to improve the commonwealth’s information technology infrastructure,” said Lhassan Oubala. “This open and royalty free specification provides easier integration and a compact format that is in accordance with ITD’s vision.
And even while the debate rages, other states are sure to feel the impact as they evaluate open document adoption.
On Wednesday, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer signed a bill similar to one in Minnesota mandating the study of open formats. And states like Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, and Texas, where open document legislation was previously killed, are said to be gearing up to take another shot.
And overseas Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway are either testing or have approved open file formats.
