Open Standard ODF Still Vastly Underutilised in Government Services
Aia Software shows support at 7th annual ODF Plugfest
On 17 November, Aia Software participated in the international ODF Plugfest, hosted this year in the Netherlands, in Gouda City Hall.
Officially the "OpenDocument Format for Office Applications", ODF is the XML-based open standard for Office documents. Since 2007, Dutch government services have been working to change all documents over to it. This gives municipalities and companies a great deal of freedom in their choice of software: all suppliers are free to provide ODF support in their products.
Kitty Kösters, Business Consultant at Aia Software: “We have been supporting ODF in our product range for years now, alongside several other standards. We understand that, as a government service, you certainly want to be able to make choices based on functionality, without being forcibly chained to a specific application. Within the context of all of the cost-cutting measures, ODF is becoming more and more attractive as an alternative. They certainly have our full support.”
Plugfest is organized by the Open Doc Society and the Nederland Open in verbinding (NoiV) programme office, in collaboration with the ODF government and governmental organization user group. ODF Plugfest aims to promote the open standard and offers suppliers the opportunity to test out document exchange for themselves to see if it actually works in practice.
As of 17 November, Dutch suppliers were collaborating on a number of scenarios. For instance, a birth certificate that meets all legal requirements was created in ODF. Moreover, it is also important for suppliers to meet up in person every now and again, to exchange experiences and better harmonize their efforts.
The report on the event is available here:
https://noiv.nl/actueel/nieuws/2011/11/succesvol-odf-plugfest/
Ineke Schop, NoiV programme manager: “The NoiV programme office works in collaboration with Dutch suppliers to devise practical solutions and to help municipalities and other government services handle their IT housekeeping with open standards. So I’m thrilled that a number of suppliers used the ODF Plugfest to improve their products and demonstrate to each other that they are working to stay at the forefront of open document format support. This will make it easier for our host, the municipality of Gouda, and all other government services to meet the requirements from the NOiV action plan and above all to help themselves facilitate their own ICT expansions and adjustments.”