As governments ar-ound the world adopt to e-governance big-time, one of the major problem faced by them and their constituents is that they may not be able to access, retrieve and use critical records, information and documents in the future. This is because the documents could be stored in different formats, using different platform technologies.
And in an effort to make the documents accessible online easily, several technology companies and organisations got together and formed the Open Document Format Alliance in March this year. The mission of the ODF Alliance is to enable "the public sector to have greater control over and direct management of their own records, information and documents, the ODF Alliance seeks to promote and advance the use of ODF".
ODF Alliance works globally to educate policymakers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of the Open Document Format to help ensure that government information, records and documents are accessible across platforms and applications, even as technologies change today and in the future.
The ODF Alliance kicked off its events in India with a national seminar on ODF in New Delhi on Friday jointly with the "International Congress on Electronic Governance" at IIT Delhi. But what’s ODF. It’s an open XML-based document file format that enables the retrieval of information and exchange of documents (including spreadsheets, charts, and presentations) without regard to the application or platform in which the document was created — both now and in the future.
ODF was developed as an application-independent file format by Oasis (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a vendor-neutral standards organisation. It is available for implementation and use free of any licensing, royalty payments or other restrictions. ODF has been an approved OASIS standard since May 2005 and has been implemented by multiple vendors in a variety of products as well as in multiple open source software projects.
The best part of ODF is that its specification is available for use by any developer, including proprietary software vendors as well as open source developers. Key members of of ODF Alliance in India include Sun Microsystems, IBM, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, CDAC and faculty from IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Bombay.The alliance says that ODF provides governments with enhanced access by ensuring that documents are usable in the future by anyone, at any time.
"By providing complete interoperability among office suites, ODF provides governments with greater choice."
And in an effort to make the documents accessible online easily, several technology companies and organisations got together and formed the Open Document Format Alliance in March this year. The mission of the ODF Alliance is to enable "the public sector to have greater control over and direct management of their own records, information and documents, the ODF Alliance seeks to promote and advance the use of ODF".
ODF Alliance works globally to educate policymakers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of the Open Document Format to help ensure that government information, records and documents are accessible across platforms and applications, even as technologies change today and in the future.
The ODF Alliance kicked off its events in India with a national seminar on ODF in New Delhi on Friday jointly with the "International Congress on Electronic Governance" at IIT Delhi. But what’s ODF. It’s an open XML-based document file format that enables the retrieval of information and exchange of documents (including spreadsheets, charts, and presentations) without regard to the application or platform in which the document was created — both now and in the future.
ODF was developed as an application-independent file format by Oasis (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a vendor-neutral standards organisation. It is available for implementation and use free of any licensing, royalty payments or other restrictions. ODF has been an approved OASIS standard since May 2005 and has been implemented by multiple vendors in a variety of products as well as in multiple open source software projects.
The best part of ODF is that its specification is available for use by any developer, including proprietary software vendors as well as open source developers. Key members of of ODF Alliance in India include Sun Microsystems, IBM, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, CDAC and faculty from IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Bombay.The alliance says that ODF provides governments with enhanced access by ensuring that documents are usable in the future by anyone, at any time.
"By providing complete interoperability among office suites, ODF provides governments with greater choice."