14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has just lost another important fight in the United Kingdom, after the local government decided to select the Open Document Format (ODF) as its in-house standard for all new documents.
Microsoft’s own OpenXML format, which has been used until now, was aggressively pushed by the Redmond-based tech giant as the main solution for government authorities, but the local community explained that stepping away from large tech companies should be a priority.
“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,” Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said in a statement.
At the same time, Maude added that the implementation of an open standard would also reduce costs, with forecasts pointing to an overall cost cut of more than 1 million pounds.
“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 over this Parliament,” he added.
Basically, the UK government says that once its departments have adopted the new standard (PDF/A or HTML for viewing government documents and Open Document Format ODF for sharing or collaborating on government documents), citizens, businesses and organizations would no longer need a specific Office suite in order to view these documents, because the selected formats are also supported by the majority of applications on the market.
Until now, Microsoft’s own document format was more or less forcing users to purchase an Office suite, which in most cases was very expensive and obviously increased the costs of working with documents.
At the same time, officials say, government staff will be able to share and work with documents in the same format, which removes compatibility issues and makes it easier for different departments to edit the same file.
Last but not least, departments working with documents will be able to choose their very own Office suites, thus picking the one that better addresses the need without any fears of compatibility issues.
Microsoft hasn’t yet issued a statement on this, but we’ve reached out to the company already and will update the article when and if we receive an answer about the change in the British government.