New York wants open documents

NEW YORK'S chief techie has called for the state's archives and records to be kept in an open document format.

Her recommendations will call nerds squabbling over document standards to order, and could bring an end to an international quarrel that has dragged in competition regulators, law courts and even street protesters.

But it will also result in US state governments exerting considerable influence over the open document standards used in the rest of the world.

"The State should buy technology that enables openness because State policy is to ensure access to its e-records so the State can conduct its business in an open, interoperable and transparent manner," said the NY state's chief information officer in a report.

It was about time the government took control of the way its electronic records were kept, said Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, NY CIO, and her assistant Christine Ward. They ought to be preserved for future generations, so they ought not be dependent on the commercial interests of any one software company.

Appropriately, the NY report refused to endorse OOXML, the controversial Microsoft document format that has been at the centre of the international standards spat.

But neither did NY back the open document format (odf) beloved of the open source lobby and already recognised as an international standard.

"The market has not done a sufficient job of addressing its governmental customers' interests," said the report. Neither standard was good enough.

What it proposed instead was that the OOXML and odf standards be conjoined under the direction of the International Standards Organization (ISO), and that this idea should be forwarded concertedly by chief tech bods of all US state governments.

Microsoft announced the day before the NY report that it would make its latest Office suite of software compatible with the odf, but not earlier versions. Microsoft itself had proposed that OOXML and odf be merged on the eve of the vote in April that saw its own document standard accepted for fast track approval by the ISO.

The NY report said said it did not want to take sides in the standards spat. It has involved European regulators hearing evidence that convicted software monopolist Microsoft is up to its old tricks with protectionist document formats.

The NY solution to the standards spat may please US legislators, though perhaps not those in the Rest Of the World, particularly the Europeans for whom open source provides the greatest commercial advantage, in that it reduces barriers to entry of a software market dominated by US firms.

It recommended that all US states should co-ordinate their policy over open document formats. They should decide by committee such fundamental matters as a "definition of 'openness' in standards and formats which best serves the need of its constituents".

It proposed a compelling raft of measures that would see US state governments, archive offices and IT spods set their concerted requirements for open formats into IT strategies and procurement programmes. The same would go for email and database records.

It is an interesting turn of fate that sees US legislators recommend dismantling a vital means for Microsoft to hold its dominant world position in desktop software, yet make those same US commercial interests central to the nascent international document standard, while ensuring a powerful lobby of the ISO in the interests of US government. µ