Over three dozen businesses, universities, and other organizations have formed a consortium to persuade government agencies to adopt an open-standards format for storing digital documents.
Currently, almost everybody in the public sector stores documents using Microsoft Word. But members of the new consortium, called the OpenDocument Format Alliance, are afraid that, years from now, such proprietary software won't be supported by anyone, and that people will have difficulty gaining access to old government records.
Open standards are those that can be used free by anyone building hardware or software. Any application based on a given standard, for instance, can open documents stored by any other application using the same standard. This gives software developers an incentive to keep making programs compatible with the standard as they evolve over time.
Kenneth Wasch is president of the Software & Information Industry Association, the lead organization for the new alliance. He said that using the OpenDocument Format would better ensure that documents, spreadsheets, and other digital material would remain easily accessible, because the software based on the format is not dependent on one company's support.
"The risk is much smaller because it's supported by a whole range" of companies, Mr. Wasch said. "The industry is embracing openness as never before." The alliance is an international organization with about 40 members, including IBM, Sun Microsystems, and the American Library Association. Universities involved include the Indian Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Denmark. Since the announcement was made early Friday, more organizations have expressed interest in joining, Mr. Wasch said....Patrice McDermott, deputy director of government relations for the American Library Association, said government agencies are spending millions of dollars now to convert old documents to make them independent of any software platform. Adopting the OpenDocument Format standard would save government money in the long run, she said.
"We think for access over time to government information, it's critical," Ms. McDermott said. "It's very dangerous for government to be using proprietary software."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/06/2006 10:51:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
