Open Standards

  • Dutch public sector to adopt ODF as standard?

    Steve WoodsOpen Data, Open Standards, Tech

    ODF file iconThe Dutch Standardisation Board would like to see the mandatory use of Open Document Format (ODF) for the country’s public sector organisations, according to a report on Joinup giving details of a presentation made by Nico Westpalm van Hoorn to the recent ODF Plugfest held in The Hague.

    Van Hoorn stated that over 450,000 documents are transferred each day between the Dutch central
    government and citizens or companies.

    His presentation contained 3 main messages:

    • The only way reuse of document content is achievable for open data is by using the ODF format;
    • The only way to ensure sustainable access is by using the ODF format; and
    • “This format cannot be opened,” as a remark by a public servant is not acceptable when somebody sends an ODF document.

    Within the Dutch government, ODF is used as the default format for editable documents that are posted online. Documents are by default shared as HTML, PDF (for archiving) and as ODF. Furthermore, all central government workstations are capable of working with ODF, suggesting that civil servants who cannot open the format need some IT training.

    Speaking at the same event, Steven Luitjes, director of Logius – an agency assisting government organisations in building e-government services, admitted that ODF is often ignored by public sector organisations and that a failure to standardise on formats is increasing the cost of public sector IT.

    If the Dutch government does adopt ODF as a standard, this would follow on from the recent announcement of the standard’s adoption by the Italian Ministry of Defence (posts passim) and the UK government’s publication of guidance for the introduction of ODF.

  • LibreOffice & ODF to be adopted by Italian military

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Italian military is moving to LibreOffice and Open Document Format (ODF), according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website. This will be Europe’s second largest migration to a free and open source office suite and open standards since the Italian Defence Ministry will be installing LibreOffice on 150,000 machines.

    LibreOffice

    The migration will begin in October 2015 and is expected to be completed at the end of 2016.

    The deployment of LibreOffice will be jointly managed by Libreitalia and the Italian Defence Ministry, with the former providing trainers and the Ministry devising course materials, which will later be released under a Creative Commons licence.

    An agreement between the Ministry and LibreItalia was signed on 15th September in Rome by Rear Admiral Ruggiero Di Biase, General Manager of the Italian Ministry of Defence’s Information Systems and LibreItalia president Sonia Montegiove.

    Sonia Montegiove and Rear Admiral Ruggiero Di Biase

    The Ministry of Defence is the first Italian central government organisation to migrate to open source software for office productivity. On the other hand, many regional public sector organisations have already made this move, such as the Emilia-Romagna region, the provinces of Perugia, Cremona, Macerata, Bolzano and Trento, the cities of Bologna, Piacenza and Reggio Emilia, the Galliera Hospital in Genoa and healthcare ASL 5 in Veneto, to name but a few.

    The Italian Defence Ministry project is also one of Europe’s largest migrations to date to a free and open source office suite. The largest European public sector organisation using free software office suites is currently the French Interior Ministry with some 240,000 desktops. Many French ministries use open source office suites including the Tax Agency, the Finance Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture. LibreOffice is deployed on some 72,000 PCs within the French Gendarmerie, which also uses Ubuntu Linux as its operating system of choice.

    In June 2014, the autonomous regional government of Extremadura (Spain) confirmed that 10,000 PCs in its healthcare organisation are running open source office applications and that the same is planned for its own 22,000 PCs. In Germany the city of Munich runs also runs LibreOffice on over 17,000 Linux workstations.

  • FSFE supports recognition for User Data Rights

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    FSFE logoThe Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has announced today that it supports the publication of the User Data Manifesto 2.0, which aims at defining basic rights for people to control their own data in the internet age. The manifesto is published today and also supported by GNOME, KDE, Netzpolitik.org, ownCloud, Spreed, “Terms of Service – Didn’t Read” and X-Lab.

    Whether for social networking, collaboration or for sharing pictures, among many other activities, users are nowadays increasingly using online services and are thus at more risk than ever of losing control of their own data.

    According to the User Data Manifesto, people should have:

    • Control over user data access;
    • Knowledge of how user data is stored and which laws or jurisdictions are applicable; and
    • Freedom to choose a platform, without experiencing vendor lock-in. The FSFE believes that Free Software is necessary to guarantee this.

    “The recognition of the User Data Rights defined in the manifesto is an important block to build a free society in the digital age”, says Hugo Roy, deputy coordinator of FSFE’s Legal Team and co-author of the User Data Manifesto.

    The manifesto is a good starting point for an important debate about users’ rights online. The FSFE anticipates other organisations joining the effort to promote online services that respects users’ rights and freedoms.

  • LibreOffice 5.0.1 released

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Yesterday The Document Foundation, the German non-profit organisation behind the LibreOffice productivity suite, announced the release of LibreOffice 5.0.1, the first minor release of the LibreOffice 5.0 family.

    This version comprises a number of fixes compared with the major release – version 5.0.0 – announced on 5th August 5. So far, LibreOffice 5.0 is the most popular version of LibreOffice ever, based on the feedback from the marketplace.

    LibreOffice 5.0.1 is aimed at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. For more conservative users and commercial deployments, The Document Foundation recommends LibreOffice 4.4.5. For commercial deployments, The Document Foundation suggests engaging certified professional support.

    Those interested in technical details of the release can consult access the change logs at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.1/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.1/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

    LibreOffice 5

    LibreOffice 5.0.1 is immediately available for download and users, free software advocates and community members are encouraged to make a donation to The Document Foundation.

  • Whitehall’s latest open standards consultations

    Steve WoodsOpen Standards, Politics, Tech

    The British government has announced it is now consulting and seeking comments on its latest open standards proposals.

    The standards on which it is inviting comments are:

    Exchange of location point information
    An open standard for the exchange of location information, allowing coordinates to be translated between systems.

    Exchange of property / place address information
    A proposed standard to define and exchange address information between government departments. This is not about changing your postal address, but it could change the way government records information about your location.

    Publishing vacancies online
    A standard to help citizens searching for government jobs and apprenticeships.

    Once the comment period closes, proposals will be assessed by a panel composed of civil servants and industry specialists, which will decide whether the proposal should go forward for consideration by the Open Standards Board. The Open Standards Board will then make a recommendation about the standard’s adoption across government.

  • ODF 1.2 published as international standard

    Steve WoodsOpen Standards, Politics, Tech

    The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) Version 1.2, the native file format of the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite and many other applications, has been published as International Standard 26300:2015 by ISO/IEC.

    TDF ODF 1.2 bannerODF defines a technical schema for office documents including text documents, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents like drawings or presentations.

    “ODF 1.2 is the native file format of LibreOffice. Today, ODF is the best choice for interoperability, because it is widely adopted by applications and is respected by applications in every area”, says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “ODF makes interoperability a reality and transforms the use of proprietary document formats into a relic of the past. In the future, people will tell stories about incompatible document formats between two releases of proprietary office suites as a bygone problem”.

    ODF is developed by the OASIS consortium. The current version of the standard was published in 2011 and then was submitted to ISO/IEC in 2014.

    The standard is available in three parts – schema, formula definition and packages – from the repository of Publicly Available Standards as a free download, as follows:

    1. Schema
    2. Formula Definition
    3. Packages

    The standard is also available from the OASIS ODF TC website.

    ODF 1.2 is supported by all the leading office suites and by a large number of other applications. It has been adopted by the UK Cabinet Office as the reference for all documents exchanged with the UK Government (posts passim) and is currently proposed as the reference standard by the Référentiel Général d’Interopérabilité 1.9.9 of the French Government. In addition, ODF 1.2 has been adopted by many European public sector organisations. Furthermore, in Brazil, ODF is part of the electronic government programme – Progranma do Governo Eletrônico (e-PING).

  • Bari to migrate 75% of workstations to LibreOffice

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    Bari Today reports that the Municipality of Bari is migrate 75% of its workstations to the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite during the current year.

    LibreOffice

    According to Alessandro Tomasicchio, the councillor with responsibility for technological innovation, “In this way we guarantee the participation of citizens in public sector decision-making.”

    In addition, the council is adopting ODF – the standard file format of LibreOffice and other open source office suites – as the standard file format that meets all the authority’s technical requirements.

    Management of the project entails various kinds of skills, from the analysis of flows of documents within the council to the management of interactions between users and IT systems. Great attention has been paid to staff training and internal communication, which are regarded as fundamental elements for achieving the local authority’s goal.

    After analysing the software solutions available and practical testing, the Innvoation Department decided to adopt the free and open source LibreOffice suite, which is compatible with other proprietary office suites, including MS Office currently used by Bari.

    The choice of LibreOffice, unlike proprietary software, is compliant with the provisions of Article 68 of the [Italian] Digital Administration Code and the Apulia Region‘s law on the adoption and promotion of open source by public sector organisations.

    By the end of the current year at least 75% of Bari’s workstations will migrate from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice.

    Antonio Cantatore, head of Bari’s Innovation Department also stated that one reason for switching to LibreOffice would be major savings in the total cost of ownership (TCO). By not having to pay licence fees to Microsoft for the Office package currently installed on 1,700 of Bari’s workstations, the local authority is looking at costs savings €75,000 +VAT.

  • Registration is open for 2015 LibreOffice conference

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Registration for the 2015 LibreOffice Conference, which will be hosted by the Danish city of Aarhus from 23rd to 25th September (posts passim), is now open, The Document Foundation blog has announced.

    LibreOffice Conference 2015 logo

    Attendees can register at http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/registration/.

    The Call for Papers is still open until 15th July 15, 2015. Tracks for papers are based on Development, Quality Assurance, Localization, Documentation and Native Language Projects, Ease of Use, Design and Accessibility, Migrations and Deployments, Certifications and Best Practices, ODF, Document Liberation and Interoperability and Building a Business around LibreOffice.

    The conference website also includes some practical info about travel and accommodation.

    This year’s conference is being sponsored by CIB, Collabora, Google, Magenta and RedHat.

  • LibreOffice 2015 Conference – call for papers

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Social Media, Tech

    The call for papers for this year’s LibreOffice Conference has today been announced on Twitter by Collabara’s LibreOffice team.

    LibreOffice Conference 2015 logo

    Proposals should be submitted by 15th July 2015 in order to guarantee that they will be considered for inclusion in the conference programme.

    The conference programme will be based on the following topics:

    • Development, APIs, Extensions, Future Technology;
    • Quality Assurance;
    • Localisation, Documentation and Native Language Projects;
    • Appealing Libreoffice: Ease of Use, Design and Accessibility;
    • Enterprise and Public Sector Deployments and Migrations, Certifications and Best Practices;
    • Open Document Format, Document Liberation and Interoperability; and
    • Building a successful business around LibreOffice.

    Aarhus montageThis year’s event will be held in Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, from 23rd to 25th September inclusive.

    Venue

    The venue will be a completely new venue on the harbour in Aarhus called “Dokk1 – Urban Media Space Aarhus“.

    Urban Media Space is described as “a flexible and dynamic sanctuary for everyone in search of knowledge, inspiration and personal development – an open and accessible learning environment supporting democracy and community and is also going to be an example of the library of the future.”

    Conference communication channels

    The official communication channel during the conference will be the conference mailing list, conference@global.libreoffice.org. All participants will automatically be subscribed to that list, whilst the archives can be browsed at http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/conference/.

    Primary Danish conference contacts

    The primary conference contacts in Denmark have likewise been announced; they are:

    • Carsten Agger (Open Space Aarhus);
    • Line Dybdahl (Municipality of Aarhus);
    • Leif Lodahl (LibreOffice Denmark); and
    • René Lagoni Neukirch (LibreOffice Denmark).

  • LibreOffice Viewer for Android released

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation, the organisation behind LibreOffice, the most popular free and open source office suite, has announced the release of a native application for viewing ODF documents on Android devices.

    The app can be installed from the Google Play Store, whilst direct download of the APK will be made available at http://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-viewer.

    LibreOffice Viewer screenshotLibreOffice Viewer also offers basic editing capabilities, like modifying words in existing paragraphs and changing font styles such as bold and italics.

    Editing is still an experimental feature which has to be enabled separately in the settings, and is not stable enough for mission critical tasks. Full-blown editing will be enabled in the future with
    the help of LibreOffice’s steadily growing developer community. The editing features provided in the current release have been developed thanks to donations to The Document Foundation.

    Feedback and bug reports for the app are very welcome to help developers improve its quality en route to a fully-fledged editor. Users are invited to report problems, using the bug tracker and attaching files that have triggered the issue at http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php?id=N09VVkUAB00ABgsI.

    LibreOffice Viewer uses the same engine as LibreOffice for Linux, OS X and Windows. This, combined with a new front-end based on Firefox for Android, reads documents similarly to a desktop version of LibreOffice.

    LibreOffice Viewer has been developed by Collabora and Igalia, backed by Smoose, with contributions from Google Summer of Code students, together with The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community. SUSE provided a key foundation of cross-platform support, whilst the Mozilla Corporation – makers of Firefox- made several core components available.

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