OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Many cgovernments, from China to Norway, have come to the same conclusion.

See Open Source Agency for an idea that embraces your own, and is the proponent for F/OSS at all levels of government, as well as Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), Open Spectrum, and other Opens.

My briefs on Open Everything are at www.oss.net/GNOME and www.oss.net/UNICEF.

rkh - if you want to assure the widest availability for 'independence', shouldn't we be using ASC and .TXT files? How about .HTM and/or .RTF? Why would you suggest PDF and ODF both of which were developed for and tied to specific companies’ products (Adobe and SUN respectively?)

Furthermore, if you were to suggest Government focus on the most ’widely’ used format, shouldn’t it be .DOC which is currently supported by nearly every word processor (including freeware) in existence today?

The answer is quite simple actually – Governments should use the tools are resources that most effectively meet their needs – which include openness and transparency. In the case of file formats, Governments use a wide variety of tools, and different formats are appropriate for different functions. Trying to leverage a single format sounds great, but inappropriately simplifies the need of Governments and citizens. In addition, it does not account for the fact what is *really* important is the application that implements the format. Formats are a specification, and it is the quality of the application that implements it that matters. By limiting to specific formats, you in effect will limit capability and functionality.

If limiting formats and choice is appropriate, how about other areas? For a very simplified example – in the case of image formats you might use .JPG and .TIFF - .JPG may be appropriate for lower resolution and smaller file sizes (posting the web), and .TIFF for higher resolution printing needs. It is difficult to imagine limiting Government image needs to one format.

To tie my thoughts together and why not .TXT, it is because the Government needs and uses functionality in *applications* - .TXT may be appropriate in many situations, but will not suffice when formatting, tables, and/or images are included.

Mandates and procurement preferences for specific technologies (which under the covers are intended to limit choice and benefit specific groups) are not appropriate. The expectations and standard for Governments to provide accessibility and wide availability of electronic services should be high and a multitude of solutions and innovations should continue to be at their disposal. More often than not Governments actually do acquire the tools and resources that most effectively meet their needs and provide the greatest value and availability for citizens.

As long as the standard is non-proprietary and open, it should be usable.

txt files will not meet the formatting needs of many government documents, including spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and even normal text documents.

The doc format may be widely supported, but it is not supported very well, even by Microsoft. They make changes with each version and backward compatibility is not guaranteed. It's problems are one of the motivations for this movement.

Your lead point is essential -- from a technology perspective, US citizens, suppliers, and partners should have non-discriminatory access to government websites, electronic services, forms, and documents. The Norwegian government has accomplished this by requiring the use of open formats as follows: HTML for publishing public information on the internet; PDF for documents that need to maintain their original appearance; and ODF to publish documents which the user may need to download and fill out. It would seem fair, and "technology neutral" to steal a grossly overused term, to have:

1) US procurement policy encourage open formats, so that governments retain access to and control over their electronic documents and records without discriminatory reliance on the software application on which the documents or records were first created. ODF should be considered as the default format for editable documents.

2) US procurement policy and research grants encourage the development of affordable, productivity-enhancing IT solutions for persons with disabilities by leveraging open source software and communities.

In addition to this and the F/OSS recommendation, I'd like to see government IT more involved in the F/OSS community. I mean Microsoft would throw a huge fit, but let's solve a problem once and stop beating dead horses. If a Minnesota State tech worker programs something for the state offices to use, that should be immediately available on sourceforge or something with adequate publicity so that other governments can also benefit.

Thus, the problem of ODF versus other formats could be solved once and for all, by a vastly improved OpenOffice (or whatever) due to the increased collaboration by government agencies.

It only makes sense, as our government is For the People, By the People, and so is Free and Open Source Software. Private business exists to add value, and can't expect to continue to charge a fee for products that haven't added significant value in the past 14 years (see Office '95.)

I would like to direct readers to some testimony I gave to the State of Texas on the use of open document formats: http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1500. I think with proper substitution of "United States" for "Texas," the arguments still hold.

For example, I stated, in part:

IBM is not fine with the status quo. Neither were the drafters of this bill. Nor are most industries; those in life sciences, education, healthcare, and so on, that are trending toward “openness.” With the creation of the Internet and the Web, based on open standards such as HTML, the value of real open standards has been seen.

Think how much easier, more affordable, more transparent it is for you to collaborate within government and connect with your citizens because of the Internet and email, blogging, and all that has come from open standards. Now it is the time to take this collaborative power to documents and open them up giving control to governments and choice to citizens.

IBM joined our industry colleagues to work on an open standard for file formats, namely, the OASIS/ISO OpenDocument Format (ODF). File formats are merely blueprints for how a document is structured ” headers, footer, paragraphs” and how it should be saved and exchanged. OpenDocument Format is being openly and actively developed by a community of global experts from many organizations and is seeing broad implementation in independent ways from both open and proprietary sources.