Group: OpenDocument/Who

North America

• United States

  • Massachusetts: The Commonwealth had in September 2005, become the first state to formally endorse OpenDocument formats for its public records and, at the same time, reject Microsoft's proprietary XML format. This decision was made after a two-year examination of file formats, including many discussions with Microsoft, other vendors, and various experts. After this announcement by Massachusetts supporting OpenDocument, a large number of people and organizations spoke up about the policy, including Microsoft who sent in a letter highly critical of the measure, as well as a group named "Citizens Against Government Waste", who had received funding from Microsoft. While still permitting use of ODF, in 2007 Massachusetts unfortunately also amended its approved technical standards list to include Office Open XML.

  • New York: The state has <a href="http://www.oft.state.ny.us/oftnews/erecords-study.htm">sought comments</a> on its proposed policy which seeks to gather stakeholder input regarding the mechanisms and processes for obtaining access to and reading electronic data so that such data can be created, maintained, exchanged, and preserved by the state in a manner that encourages appropriate government control, access, choice, interoperability, and vendor neutrality.

South America

• Argentina: In September 2007 the Argentinian Province of Misiones decided that the use of ODF will be mandatory within the government. Around a million people live in this province, which is one of the 23 provinces of Argentina.
• Brazil: As the General Director of ODF Alliance Chapter Brazil declared at the debate hosted at CONSEGI 2008: "the citizen must understand that when they open a government website and the file offered is in a format of a proprietary software, it presupposes that he/she is obligated to have the license of that software, what is unacceptable and out of the law." (<a href="http://news.northxsouth.com/2008/09/28/brazil-begins-using-the-open-document-format/">Source</a>)

Europe

• Belgium: All government departments must be able to read ODF and from September this year, all exchanges of documents between federal goverment agencies must use OpenDocument. Other agencies (regional, municipal, European, etc) are unaffected. Belgium is also considering OOXML.

• Croatia:In April, 2008 The <a href="http://www.hzn.hr/english/priopcenja.html">Croatian Standards Institute</a> (Hrvatski zavod za norme, HZN) confirmed it had <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7563/469">approved</a> the Open Document Format ODF as a national standard.

• Germany: The German Federal government are <a href="http://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2008/12/odf.html">readying to support ODF</a>.

• Finland: The Ministry of Justice has chosen Open Office and thus the OpenDocument format as their main document format from the beginning of 2007. The decision was made after deep research of ODF possibilities. Other ministries may follow.

• Germany: The Federal Foreign Office has migrated totally to OpenDocument, with 250 foreign offices outside of Germany also following. The cities of Freiburg and Munich have both adopted OpenOffice.org and many of the high courts in Germany, including the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice), are accepting OpenDocument communications.

• Netherlands: From the beginning of 2009, the OpenDocument format and free software will be the standard for reading, publishing and the exchange of information for all governmental organizations. Where free software cannot be not used, special reasons must be given.

• Norway: Norway's Ministry of Government Administration and Reform decided in December 2007 that ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) must be used from 2009 when publishing documents that are meant to be changed after downloading, i.e. forms that are to be filled in by the user.

• United Kingdom: The British Education Communication Technology Agency, BECTA, made a recommendation that "Any office application used by institutions must be able to be saved to (and so viewed by others) using a commonly agreed format that ensures an institution is not locked into using specific software." In addition, Bristol City Council is using the OpenDocument format across its 5000+ desktop computers.

• Slovakia: OpenDocument is listed alongside HTML, XML and PDF as an acceptable format by the Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications.

Africa

• South Africa: On October 23, 2007, the Department of Public Service and Administration of the South African government released a report on interoperability standards in government information systems. It specifies ODF as the standard for "working office document formats" (with UTF-8/ASCII text and comma-separated values data as the only alternatives).

Asia

• India: The Allahabad High Court of India has decided, as policy, to use OpenDocument format for its documents. A local Indian perspective on the vote against Microsoft's OOXML ahead of the March 29 deadline -- of 19 companies participating, only 5 voted in favor of OOXML. "It was the ultimate battle for control over global IT standard for documents — between Microsoft-promoted OOXML and Sun and IBM-backed Open Document Format. It was played out between Indian IT giants, namely Infosys, Wipro, TCS supported by Nasscom on one side and the global IT biggies like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat backed by te IITs, IIMs and IISc on the other, on their respective positions on Microsoft's OOXML standard. Microsoft understandably expressed its disspointment. 'While we are disappointed with the decision of the BIS committee, we are encouraged by the support from NASSCOM.'"

• Japan: On June 29, 2007, the government of Japan published a new interoperability framework which gives preference to the procurement of products that follow open standards including the ODF standards.

• Malaysia: In August, 2007, The Malaysian government announced plans to adopt open standards and the Open Document Format (ODF) within the country's public sector. The Malaysian Administration Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) issued a tender for a nine-month study to evaluate the usage of open standards. <a href="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/mampu-migrates.html">More information</a>.

• Vietnam: In September 2007, more than 20,000 computers used at Party agencies nationwide will replace Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org.

Australia and New Zealand

• Australia: It was announced on March 31, 2006, that the National Archives of Australia had settled on OpenDocument as their choice for a cross-platform/application document format.

• New Zealand: The e-Government programme notes, "ODF shows a lot of promise for open document accessibility and usability. At the time of writing, ODF is still in relatively early days and there are still variants. It is not considered mature enough as yet to include as an accessible format, however developments and uptake of ODF will be monitored and the position on ODF adjusted and expanded accordingly." Standards New Zealand also voted against Office Open XML, but noted "At the time, we announced that voting 'no' with comments provides the opportunity for any technical issues to be resolved. If all the concerns are resolved we will have the chance to change New Zealand’s vote to a 'yes'."