UK government backs away from Microsoft, moves closer to Open Document Format

ODF has been adopted by governments around the world. Credit: Vitorio Furusho

In a further blow to Microsoft’s grip on government desktop computing in the UK, the UK government has published 18 guides offering detailed information about the Open Document Format (ODF) standard and how to move organisations to ODF-compliant solutions.

ODF 1.2 was selected last year as the standard for editable office documents to be used across UK government departments, along with HTML5 and PDF, which became the official defaults for static documents that would be viewed, but not edited after they were published. The fact that native Word formats were not included as an alternative option was a major defeat for Microsoft, which had lobbied hard—and until 2014, lobbied successfully—to prevent this high-profile victory for ODF’s open standard.

The ODF standard, which originally sprung up from the OpenOffice.org XML file format and was first standardised in 2005, is widely used in the free software world. Commercial software suites, such as Word and Lotus Symphony, also support ODF.

The UK government’s new guides cover many aspects of ODF: a basic introduction; how to procure ODF solutions; platform support; accessibility; and an overview of productivity software that supports ODF. Some offer more practical advice, for example avoiding the use of macros, adopting extensions and plug-ins, as well as corporate styles and templates.

The last guide is potentially the most important, detailing cost savings and other benefits that flow from adopting ODF. It provides links to information about a number of other European governments and municipalities that have made the move to ODF. That’s useful because, taken in conjunction with the UK government’s growing commitment to the Open Document Format, these case studies may encourage other governments and businesses to switch to ODF too. Indeed, it was an evident fear of this kind of snowball effect that led Microsoft to fight so vigorously against the adoption of ODF by the UK authorities.

Although the present guides are not in themselves earth-shattering in any way, their mere existence is further confirmation of the UK government’s move to open standards, and, much to the chagrin of Microsoft, a sign that it has no intention of reversing its course. That it’s the UK government, too—a rather big and important government in the grand scheme of things—also endows these low-level technical documents with a far broader significance for both ODF in particular, and open source in general.