Australian Government Considers Requiring ODF Support in Suites

According to a new report from John Sheridan, Australia's chief technology officer, the Australian government may be very close to requiring that its offices support Open Document Format (ODF), in addition to a number of other open standards. If the push succeeds, Australia would join many other countries--quite a few of them in Europe--that support ODF, helping to bolster ODF as a common standard worldwide.

According to Sheridan's report:

"The new draft [of government recommendations] now requires that office productivity suites must provide support for at least version 1.1 of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) as defined by ISO/IEC 26300:2006/Amd 1:2012."

Notably, Sheridan's proposal does not require that ODF be used as a standard. Rather, it just specifies that productivity suites must support ODF. Recent versions of Microsoft Office, as well as Google Docs, Libre Office and OpenOffice support the file format. 

Organizations that have attempted to standardize on ODF have run into some problems with compatibility with legacy spreadsheets and documents, but the problems are being steadily ironed out, which Sheridan notes in his report. He also specifically cites Microsoft's support for ODF:

"While the majority of agencies currently deploy a version of Microsoft Office, this does not limit the adoption of ODF as the commonly supported format, as Microsoft Office provides native support for ODF in versions later than Office 2007 SP2."

"While the majority of agencies currently deploy a version of Microsoft Office, this does not limit the adoption of ODF as the commonly supported format, as Microsoft Office provides native support for ODF in versions later than Office 2007 SP2."

Sheridan has taken a leadership role with regard to ODF, as have many countries around the world. His proposals do not constitute confirmation that Australian government offices will sign off, but he makes a strong case for support for ODF as well as other open standards.