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"A Strategy for Openness: Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State"

By Pamela Jones et al.

Remember the New York State group that was told to investigate longterm storage needs in government and ODF/OOXML? The report is now published, "A Strategy for Openness: Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State". You can get it here in doc, PDF and odt formats, although only PDF works currently. It's just been posted, so later they should all be there.

What did they find? You can find the "Major Findings" on page 8 of this PDF, part 1 of the study. The most significant finding is that having more than one format doesn't provide increased choice. It confuses and increases complexity and costs instead. It would be better to use single, standardized formats to increase efficiency and interoperability. Well, we all tried to tell ISO that Microsoft's argument was wrong. They didn't listen, but that doesn't mean that governments will just fall into line. It's obvious that if you want interoperability, you need to agree on one standard everyone can use equally.

Full post as published by Groklaw on May 20, 2008 (boomark / email).