UK Makes ODF Its Official Documents Format Standard

Turning its back on Microsoft Office's native formats, the UK government has adopted the Open Document Format for all its sharable documents.  In 2006 and 2007, there was an enormous documents standards war between Microsoft, with its OpenXML documents format, and the open-source community with its Open Document Format (ODF).  In the end, Microsoft, while eventually supporting ODF, won. ODF, while still supported by such popular open-source office suites as LibreOffice and OpenOffice, became something of an after-thought.

Until, the UK government announced on Tuesday, that it will now require all official office suites to support ODF.  The document format world has just been turned upside down.  The UK Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude, said in prepared remarks the, "Government will begin using open formats that will ensure that citizens and people working in government can use the applications that best meet their needs when they are viewing or working on documents together."

Specifically the selected standards are:

• PDF/A or HTML for viewing government documents
• ODF for sharing or collaborating on government documents

The UK made this decision, Maude said, because: "Our long-term plan for a stronger economy is all about helping UK businesses grow. We have listened to those who told us that open standards will reduce their costs and make it easier to work with government. This is a major step forward for our digital-by-default agenda which is helping save citizens, businesses and taxpayers £1.2 billion ($2.05bn) over this Parliament."...