The Hindu Business Line : Discussion on open document standard enters crucial stage

Hyderabad, Feb. 24 As the world debates about what makes the best suited document standard — open or proprietary — India is set to take its stand to the Geneva meet where polling is slated for this week.

Meanwhile, several companies such as IBM, Sun Micro, Red Hat and experts at IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay, IIM-Ahmedabad, Computer Society of India and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research have expressed their support to the Open Document Format (ODF), according to Mr Dravida Seetharam, Vice-President (Government Programme), IBM.

On Monday, this would now be subjected to what is being termed as Ballot Resolution Meeting. This is after the initial rejection of OOXML (Office Open Extensible Mark-up Language) by the International Organisation for Standardisation in September 2007.

Mr Seetharam said standardisation discussion now enters a crucial stage when the national bodies will discuss clarifications on the various objections raised against OOMXL document format. Last time, India had voted against OOXML.

Implications

Asked about the implication of the open document format that IBM and others are supporting, Mr Seetharam said this would simplify the developer’s job as they would work on a much simpler format, ensuring standards.

This assumed greater significance in India as the Government sought to spend more for eGovernance and education. If different States, or districts within a State or even departments within a State interact, a standardised document format would ensure easy access. Unless this is done, there would be compatibility issues as formats clash, he explained.

With open standards, it will be easy to preserve vital public records, and access information. For the Government, this could be information on land records, birth and death certificates and other general data on citizens.

Support stand

So, is the Ministry of Information Technology and trade bodies such as Nasscom and MAIT supporting this initiative? Mr Seetharam said that while they hold a neutral stand on the issue, they have been supportive of the open standards initiative.

The ODF has emerged as the only viable and internationally approved document format; it is owned by the computer community and not linked to a computing platform of one vendor. A lot of open source and commercial software packages support ODF and bring down overall licence and maintenance costs, he explained.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) will represent India at the ballot.

The Netherlands, China, Japan, Norway, France, Denmark, Brazil are among those that have expressed their intent to support ODF. Kerala has also expressed support for this format.