On Wednesday the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called Sprint 14, in which it invited Ministers, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to showcase some major new digital public services for the first time.

Among the speakers was Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who in his speech made some interesting and welcome noises about document formats:

Today I can announce that we’ve set out the document formats that we propose should be adopted across government – and we’re asking you to tell us what you think about them.

He then continued with equally welcome and interesting noises on open standards:

Technical standards for document formats may not set the pulse racing – it may not sound like the first shot in a revolution. But be in no doubt: the adoption of open standards in government threatens the power of lock-in to propriety vendors yet it will give departments the power to choose what is right for them and the citizens who use their services.

The documents formats referred to by Mr Maude in his speech can be found on the Cabinet Office’s Standards Hub section of its website on the Sharing or collaborating with government documents webpage, which states

When dealing with citizens, information should be digital by default and therefore should be published online. Browser-based editing is the preferred option for collaborating on published government information. HTML (4.01 or higher e.g. HTML5) is therefore the default format for browser-based editable text. Other document formats specified in this proposal – ODF 1.1 (or higher e.g. ODF 1.2), plain text (TXT) or comma separated values (CSV) – should be provided in addition. ODF includes filename extensions such as .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.

Whilst the government has conceded that open formats and standards should be used when dealing with citizens, how long will it take for changes to take place before editable documents intended for use by we peasants citizens will be available in anything other than the quasi-ubiquitous MS Office formats currently provided?

As an answer to a question from a Swedish politician the EU Commission has also confirmed ODF as a standard document format, Germany’s Linux Magazin writes. However, free software advocates are criticising the step as “not far-reaching enough”.

At the end of November 2013 Amelia Andersdotter MEP, a member of the Swedish Pirate Party, submitted a written question to the EU Commission in which she dug deeper in two points into what was happening with file formats recommended by the EU. In 2011 Inter-Institutional Committee for Informatics had instructed all departments to support the OOXML standard developed and controlled by Microsoft. Andersdotter inquired what sense this still made when only one manufacturer is implementing the standard and how communication could take place with public sector organisations who are using other standards.

The Commission’s answer was given a few days ago. According to a report on Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, EU Commission Vice-president Maroš Šefčovič himself responded to the written question and mentioned OOXML and ODF as minimum requirements for document exchange. Šefčovič maintains that this ensures no vendor lock-in exists or can occur. In addition, public sector organisations should support other file formats in accordance with the best effort principle, i.e. if this is practically possible.

Open source activists, such as the Open Forum Europe are describing the decision as overdue, but are criticising the EU for missing an opportunity for the EU to lead by example for not daring to stipulate ODF as a single open standard. Switzerland’s Open Systems Group welcomes this first step, Joinup states. Mathias Stürmer is even hoping that the Swiss government will follow suit, even though it is not within the EU; although it would definitely help to prompt other public sector organisations to make the change to ODF.