Discussing Open Document Formats
On Friday October 20, 2006, the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), a consultative forum to the U.S. Government and European Commission, held a Round Table discussion of consumer and user perspectives on the benefits and risks of Open Document Format (ODF), as well as the issues concerning its implementation at the Berkman Center in Cambridge. Manon Ress organized the roundtable on behalf of CPTech. Below is her report back from the meeting.
"The Open Document Format (ODF) is a relatively new standard for document and data formats that has been endorsed by a number of software companies and free software advocates. It could replace the proprietary standards for word processing, presentation graphics and spreadsheet documents that are now essentially controlled by Microsoft, a firm that has control over more than 90 percent of the global market for office productivity software.
One of the aims of the Roundtable was to create a dynamic and informed coalition of multi-stakeholders. The participants sought to better understand the opportunities and challenges of policies that would require or encourage the use of ODF as a standard document format.
The public workshop included members of various communities , consumer groups, vendors, disabled persons, government and academics representatives. The Consumer groups representatives included Alwin Sixma, Consumentenbond (The Netherlands), Amina Fazlullah, U.S. PIRG (US), Ann Wright, Consumers Union (US), Ben Wallis, TACD Coordinator, Benedicte Federspiel, Danish Consumer Council (Denmark), David Banisar, Privacy International, Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG (US), James Love, Consumer Project on Technology (US), Lars Grondal, Consumer Council of Norway (Norway), Lewis Akenji, Association of Conscious Consumers (Hungary), Malini Aisola, Consumer Project on Technology (US), Manon Ress, Consumer Project on Technology (US), Mark Silbergeld, Consumers Federation of America (US)Torgeir Waterhouse, Consumer Council of Norway (Norway). There were experts from governments and industry groups such as Andrew Updegrove, Gesmer Updegrove LLP, Dan Geer, Verdasys, Dan Johnson, Computer and Communications Industry Association, Dan O' Connor, Computer and Communications Industry Association/Open Source and Industry Alliance, Douglas Johnson, Sun Microsystems, Eric Kriss, Workmode, Laura DeNardis, Yale Information Society Group, Leon Shiman, X.org Foundation, Louis Suarez-Potts, OpenOffice.org, Peter Lord, Oracle, Peter Strickx, FEDICT, Belgian Federal Government, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, MERIT, University of Maastricht, Robert Weir, IBM, Roslyn Docktor, ODF Alliance, Sam Hiser, OpenDocument Foundation, Tim Vaverchak, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Tom Rabon, Red Hat, and Will Rodger, Computer and Communications Industry Association.
There were 5 successive Roundtables. Each roundtable was led by 5 short presentations before the topic was opened to the floor for general discussion. The first roundtable focused on "What is ODF, and why are open document standards important". There were many questions regarding how open standards affect competition and innovation, whether ODF is in fact the best standard, issues of archiving and interoperability with ODF as well as how ODF addresses/will address concerns of accessibility for disabled persons.
The second Roundtable discussed how various software developers were responding to ODF and the third roundtable focused on whether governments or non-governmental and consumer organizations should systematically use procurement policy to promote ODF. The following roundtable was a lively discussion on whether national or global "agreements" can play a role in promoting ODF and how. During that roundtable as well as the last one on "Reflections and next steps", there were discussions of future work and strategies on ODF in a new international forum, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be held in Athens, Greece, October 30 - November 3, 2006.
Following a Statement of Principles (paragraph 44) of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS- September 2006), a coalition of public interest groups, academics and industry representatives proposed a workshop on standards that will be held in Athens on November 2, 2006. The workshop will present the relationship between the "openness" of ICT standards, economic and social development, and government policy making, with a focus on procurement policies. The Open Document Format standard will be an example to highlight the positive impact open ICT standards can have on information access."
If you'd like to learn more about this issue, check out our recent Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems.