Massachusetts puts Open XML out for consideration

Massachusetts has been at the forefront of a movement to adopt open-document formats, including the OpenDocument Format (ODF)

By John Fontana, Network World, 07/02/07

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Monday proposed adding Microsoft-developed Open XML to its list of approved open documents formats.

Massachusetts Monday presented its Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) 4.0 for public review and listed under the draft’s major revisions the “Ecma-376 Office Open XML File Formats.”

The draft is open to public comment until July 20th. The final draft, which will become official state policy, is expected at the end of the month, Massachusetts officials said.

Massachusetts has been at the forefront of a movement to adopt open-document formats, including the OpenDocument Format (ODF), as opposed to proprietary formats such as those in Microsoft Office.

Open XML was derived from Microsoft’s Office Open XML (ooXML), which is the default file format in Office 2007 and was submitted to Ecma for standardization.

“[Open XML] does meet our criteria for an open standard,” said Bethann Pepoli, acting CIO of the Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD). “There is industry support for the format since it was approved in December.”

The ETRM 4.0 draft cites Open XML support in Microsoft Office 2007, OpenOffice Novell Edition and NeoOffice 2.1. The 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 Pepoli said 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,” she said. Those changes could include eliminating Open XML from ETRM in the final draft.

But Pepoli said the state needs to pick up the pace in adopting XML-based formats and we think now that “to have both formats will make it easier.”

Massachusetts expects all its agencies to migrate to XML-based office document formats, a process that is under way. The majority of agencies currently have Microsoft Office 2003 deployed, according to the ETRM 4.0 draft. Microsoft offers a free Office Compatibility Pack to support use of Open XML.

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