[A2k] Sam Hiser: NEWS FLASH: a new Texas Bill for "Open Documents"

[Manon Ress]

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NEWS FLASH: a new Texas Bill for "Open Documents"

The Secretary of State of the Texas Legislature received a Bill (SB
446) yesterday (5 Feb 2007) stating the goal of requiring Texas State
agencies (including the executive branch, the legislature, the courts
and the schools) to conduct their work in an open document format.

The Bill is authored by Ruben Hinojosa (pronounced, "HI-no HO-sa") of
the 15th Congressional District of (the State of) Texas.

Timings

The Bill, if passed into law as drafted, would take effect December
1, 2007, at the end of this year.  It contains a provision requiring
the Department of Information Resources to develop guidelines by
September 1, 2008, for converting and storing existing documents in
the open format, to inform on cost and other requirements wherever
conversions are deemed necessary.

Definition of an "open document" format

The Bill establishes that agencies must specify for themselves an
"open Extensible Markup Language based file format" for the creation,
exchange or maitentance of their electronic documents. They must be
able to receive such documents and "may not change documents to a
file format used by only one vendor."

This Bill provides a working definition of an open document format.
According to the Bill, such a document format will be...

     (1) interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms
and applications;

     (2) published without restrictions or royalties;

     (3) fully and independently implemented by multiple software
providers on multiple platforms without any intellectual property
reservations for necessary technology; and

     (4) controlled by an open industry organization with a well-
defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard.

These four criteria are sound, in my opinion. Presently ODF meets them.

As in Massachusetts, Microsoft may propose a format that meets these
criteria and thus has in its power the chance to qualify a format
that Texas state government agencies could use. However, the
Microsoft Office Open XML formats -- as presently specifiied and
developed under the Ecma consortium -- would not meet these criteria.

Posted by Sam on February 6, 2007 in ODF | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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Manon Anne Ress
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