| Norway edges toward ODF |
May 14, 2007
Norway on May 11 became the latest European country to gravitate toward mandatory government use of the Open Document Format (ODF). According to a press release from Minister of Renewal Heidi Grande Roys, Norway joins Belgium, Finland, and France to move another step toward a final decision to require ODF.
According to Andy Updegrove's ConsortiumInfo.org standards-related blog, the recommendation from the Norwegian Standards Council will be the subject of open hearings, with opinions to be rendered to the Norwegian Cabinet before Aug. 20. The Cabinet would then make its own recommendation to the government.
"The Council recommends that ODF and PDF (portable document format) are adopted as mandatory document standards to be used by all government agencies and services," the press release stated. "Other formats may be used, however, as long as documents with the same content are available at the same time in ODF or PDF.
"In remarking that Microsoft is promoting OOXML as a better format to serve their propriety binary formats, the Council states that Norway in its international standardization work ought to promote the convergence of the ODF and OOXML, in order to avoid having two standards covering the same usage," the press release added.
In the U.S., California and Massachusetts are currently in the process of making ODF an official standard.
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