- Sunday, 12 July 2009
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Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair - George Burns
ISO OOXML support criticised
THE STATE IT organisations of six countries have published a declaration questioning the neutrality of the ISO (International Standards Organisation).
Representatives in Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Paraguay issued their angry manifesto in response to the ISO's recent approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format.
"Whereas in the past it has been assumed that an ISO/IEC standard should automatically be considered for use within government, clearly this position no longer stands," they wrote on the South African representative's site.
"The bending of the rules to facilitate fast-track processing... remains a significant concern to us."
As the INQUIRER previously noted, there are now two incompatible, international document standards on which the world can conduct its discourse, manage its business, and record its archives: ODF, which was designed by the people, for the people; and OOXML, which was created by Microsoft, the convicted monopolist.
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that if you want to use a published standard for your documents:
ODF compatability is available on MANY applications
OOXML compatability is NOT available from Microsoft products.
Despite what is suggested these individuals are not repesenting the national ISO bodies of those countries nor are they people supervising those national ISO bodies. 

The people signing this letter are purely officials working for different ICT organisations (representing them often in regards to free software) within those countries and their statements are not nescesarily representing the country or the ISO national bodies views. 

The represented view by those people is more the view of some free en open software organisations than the view of countries.
The national international standards organisation bodies? Does that even make sense? I assume you mean groups like these: http://www.iso.org/iso/about/iso_members.htm These are usually quangos with a few government bods, state funding and a load of industry people. They are do not express the opinion of the government, and thus ostensibly of the people of the nation. They express the interests of a select few companies with offices in that country with the resources to participate. These declarations are from departments of governments themselves and in democratic terms at least have far more legitimacy.
Official means nothing nowadays given that experts are leaving their standardization bodies in protest. Norway: http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-93970/norwegians-leave-their-standards-body-in-protest
Brazil, etc.