Søren Thing Pedersen

På opfordring er hermed præsentation (PDF) fra mit oplæg om OpenDocument Format (ODF) d. 5. december i IT-Forum Fyn.

What is open about an open standard? When governments standardize on certain technology standards they commit the governance as well as connected citizens and companies for the longer term. Thousands of pages of specification may seem sufficient for the short term but for the long term commitment governments should look closely at the work group, the standardization process and the open discussions to find answers to questions such as:

• What are the design goals and the rationale behind the standard?
• Who are contributing and with what expertise?
• Are contributions peer reviewed?
• Is the standardization process subject to a dominating party that may hinder full implementations across vendors and platforms?
• How are your areas of interest prioritized and do you need to raise a flag?
• How are concerns and critisism from the public handled and answered in the standardization process?
• What does the future hold in terms of maintainance, revisions and support from implementors?

The bottom line is that open standards prerequisites an open standardization process that any interested party can follow and somehow give feedback to.

OASIS maintains mailing list archives accessible for the public. Thus for OASIS standards you can find answers or at least hints at answers for the questions above. In order to stay in touch with the standardization process for certain OASIS standards I wrote a simple script that produces feeds in Atom Syndication Format by parsing the mailing list archives (sorry no RSS feeds). You can also use it by using the URL: http://www.things.dk/oasislists.php?listname=[list name] . Replace [list name] with the list you want to be fed.

Here are a few examples:

Feed for Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications TC:
http://things.dk/oasislists.php?listname=office

Feed for OpenDocument Formula SC:
http://things.dk/oasislists.php?listname=office-formula

Feed for OpenDocument Accessibility SC:
http://things.dk/oasislists.php?listname=office-accessibility

Feed for Security Services (SAML) TC:
http://things.dk/oasislists.php?listname=security-services

Feed for Universal Business Language (UBL) TC:
http://things.dk/oasislists.php?listname=ubl

As I stated earlier the Danish parliament unanimously agreed on passing resolution B103 to mandate open standards in the digital governance by 2008 (or as soon as technically possible) under a comply or explain policy. The resolution doesn’t mention specific standards.

During the parliaments committees work on the resolution the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Helge Sander, revealed that an examination of various file formats for text documents have already begun. Officially, no file format has qualified yet. However, 3-4 Danish ministries immediately responded to the resolution by aiming for all documents to be published as ODF by September 2006. Officially, no file format has been disqualified yet either.

The criteria will allegedly be derived from the reasoning behind the Danish parliaments call for open standards by 2008 and consequently which standards answers the call. Open competition was one of the reasons for mandating open standards.

While working on an answer to this question the current vendor support for open standards cannot be ignored. In 2003 Helge Sander took part in Microsoft’s release of the licensing of the XML schemas for Word and Excel by saying: “As part of our software strategy, we asked Microsoft to provide us with technology that would help exchange our many millions of documents. We wanted something that would make communication easier, create interoperability and stimulate innovation.”

However, since the OASIS Technical Committee started working on ODF in 2002 Microsoft has opted not to take part in the standardization process. Instead, Microsoft is working on yet another file format, Microsoft Office Open XML, for Microsoft Office 2007. May 1 2005 OASIS approved ODF and May 1 2006 ISO members approved ODF. The second edition of the specification which incorporates feedback from the ISO process is currently undergoing public review. In comparison the first public draft of Microsoft Office Open XML was released May 18 2006.

Microsoft’s new format covers the same technical domain as ODF; office documents. However, ODF and Microsoft Office Open XML have different design goals even though they cover the same domain. ODF “[...] must be suitable for office documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents” while Office Open XML “[...] was designed around compatibility with the existing base of Microsoft Office documents”.

While ODF is designed for office documents independent of specific vendors Microsoft Office Open XML is designed for Microsoft Office documents.

Let’s ignore the fact that Microsoft Office Open XML isn’t implemented in any released product until next year and the fact that it may be rejected by ISO. Will a product centric format that covers a technical domain already covered by ODF qualify for the Danish digital governance and its use of open standards?

Officially, this question has not been answered by the Danish government or in the parliament resolution.

Unofficially, the question has already been answered by decision makers in public.

“All – except one – understands that open standards are neccessary to foster the innovation through the neccessary cooperation between the public and private sector. Microsoft states that they have published a lot of formats but we do not regard these as open standards.” (my translation)
- Søren B. Henriksen, CEO Danish Commerce & Services, the leading employers´ and trade interest organisation for commercial and knowledge-based service enterprises in Denmark (http://www.berlingske.dk/grid/it/artikel:aid=736076, May 7 2006, in Danish, subscription required)

“To answer the request for me to confirm that I support genuine open standards instead of half solutions which certain companies may agitate for I can clearly answer that of course we support 100 percent open standards – otherwise it would not make sense [supporting open standards].” (my translation)
- Michael Aastrup Jensen, MP and IT spokesperson for Venstre – the largest party in the Danish parliament and in the governing coalition (http://www.berlingske.dk/grid/it/artikel:aid=736074, May 7 2006, in Danish, subscription required)

“However, the development is pushing Microsoft to deliver on open standards. Internationally, an open xml document standard has been approved the past year. Microsoft does not follow suit but pushes their own xml standard instead. Time goes by but despite this I am convinced that the development will lead to open standards” (my translation)
- Villum Bacher, Assistant Manager Center for Koncernforvaltning under The Danish Ministry of the Environment and member of the IT architectural committee of OIO – Offentlig Information Online (public information online) (http://www.itst.dk/static/eDanmark/2006/eDanmark_feb_2006_web.pdf, in Danish)

OASIS standards such as UBL, DSML and SAML is already endorsed in OIO’s Interoperability Framework which is maintained by The Danish National IT- and Telecom Agency. Similar to the ODF situation Microsoft choose not to support SAML. In a letter to Microsoft The Danish National IT- and Telecom Agency questions the rationale for not supporting the OASIS standard:

“The Danish public sector decided early in 2005 to recommend using SAML 2.0 for federated identity and access management. This was among other based on the momentum for the standard in product support from various suppliers, plans for actual usage in public sector solutions worldwide, proofing og interoperability through testing, and also very important SAML 2.0 being a ratified OASIS standard. [...] We understand that Microsoft has a big interest in WS-Federation as Microsoft has been the main driver in developing the specification. However, in the marketplace we see several vendors that in their product supports several standards like SAML 2.0 and at the same time the WS-Federation specification to allow customer choice. This tells us that it is a feasible task to add product support for both SAML 2.0 and WS-Federation. So even though Microsoft may feel that SAML 2.0 isn’t as well suited for the vision Microsoft is having for federation in the future why don’t you support it, and let your customers decide?”
- The Danish National IT- and Telecom Agency (http://www.oio.dk/files/ITA-kom_pkt2-bilag-kopi-af-email-til-Microsoft-vedr-SAML20.pdf, in English)

The quotes above and the letter in full show that Danish decision makers are ready to mandate common standards that supports open competition in a given technical domain. This policy is also necessary to bring the Danish digital governance to the next level because according to an analysis (p. 15, in Danish) from StatBank Denmark 2 of 3 public institutions have seen lack of common standards as a barrier for digital governance.

Now that the rabbit is out of the hat it is time to look into the details of parliament resolution B103.

The reasoning behind the need for open standards is twofold in the resolution text:

1) the public sector’s use of IT solutions that supports open standards will enhance competition.

2) all digital information and data communicated between the public sector and citizens, companies etc. must be available in formats based on open standards.

Ad 1) the comments in the proposal elaborate that “it is a political duty to secure the basis for open competition.” (my translation).

Ad 2) the comments in the proposal elaborate that “it is a political duty to ensure that the use of IT in the public sector ensures the citizens democratic right to freely receive digital information from the public sector and freely send digital information to the public sector.” (my translation).

It is a general resolution on the use of open standards in the public sector by 2008 (or ASAP). Though there are no direct references to ODF the political discussion has more often than not been on the subject of the need for open document format.

In the proposal an open standard is defined as “1) well documented, 2) freely implementable without economical, political or legal limitations in both implementation and use, 3) standardised and maintained in an open proces in an open forum.” (again, my translation). I have noticed that the wording is similar to the definition of open standards from a group of Danish NGOs (in english).

UPDATE: Groklaw has a full translation of the resolution and the comments.

Currently, members of parliament are discussing what impact the resolution might or might not have. This is mainly interior politics. If you are interested in Danish interior politics and the political debate leading to the parliament resolution John Gøtze has it well covered in Openize Denmark, Parliament Orders. In his post you will find an accurate translation of the resolution as well.

Meanwhile, 3 or 4 Danish ministries will join the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation in providing documents in ODF by September.

In dramatic fashion the Danish parliament unanimously agreed on making the use of open standards mandatory in national IT solutions and software by 2008 (or ASAP). The decision was made minutes before the parliament left for the summer break and after weeks of intense discussion.

This decision should pave the way for ODF as the official document format in the Danish digital governance. The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation will take the first step and all documents from the ministry will be available as ODF by September.

UPDATE: The final discussion is available here: http://tyge.sslug.dk/~jesper/b103.avi (67mb, 30 minutes discussion in Danish)

UPDATE2: Audio only http://www.things.dk/b103.ogg (13mb)