Massachusetts maintains commitment to Open Document Format

By Stuart Corner
Sunday, 27 August 2006 14:32

Strategy

The Government of Massachusetts, which has long been in the spotlight because of its pioneering plan to have all internal documents in Open Document Format (ODF), has re-iterated its commitment to the project but has announced plans to use translators to address concerns about the accessibly of ODF documents by people with disabilities.

Among governments there has been growing concern about electronic documents being held in proprietary formats, particularly Microsoft's, and interest has been growing around the Open Document Format (ODF), a free XML file format certified as a standard by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in May.

The state Government of Massachusetts was due to implement a policy requiring all documents to be in ODF, which is not supported by current version of Microsoft Office, by 1 January 2007 but earlier this year faced another attempt to block the move   by long term opponent of the plan, Senator Marc R Pacheco, a Democrat, chairman of the oversight committee. He issued a 31-page report condemning the decision by the state's Information Technology Division (ITD) to move to ODF.

One of ODF's opponents most powerful arguments has been the limited capability of ODF, compared to Microsoft Office, to provide functionality to enable people with disabilities to access docume, and the Government of Massachusetts had promised not to stick to its planned ODF implementation schedule unless this issued could be addressed satisfactorily.

On 23 August Thomas Trimarco, secretary of the executive office for administration and finance,  issued a statement saying: "I am pleased to report that technology [to supported access by people with disabilities] is under development, and upon public release and validation will enable the Information Technology Division (ITD) to meet the goal of implementing ODF while maintaining current levels of accessibility."