FW: Notes from Open Formats Summit

Below are notes from our Open Formats Summit held in June. Due to an administrative oversight these notes were not distributed to the list in a timely manner and we apologize for that. The notes will also be posted on our web site shortly. Thanks again for your participation.

Claudia

Claudia Boldman

Director of Policy and Architecture

Information Technology Division

(617) 626-4422

www.mass.gov/itd

OPEN FORMAT SUMMIT NOTES

June 9, 2005

Facilitator: Nick Gall, Gartner

Attendees: Eric Kriss (CoMA, ANF), Peter Quinn (CoMA, ITD), Mary McRae (OASIS), Leon Shiman (CoMA, ITD), Doug Johnson (Sun), Jim Saliba (CA), Scott Peterson (HP), Tim Vaverchak (CoMA, ITD), Patrick Gannon (OASIS), Victoria Phillips (CoMA, ITD), Steve Nardone (CoMA, ITD), Claudia Boldman (CoMA, ITD), Kirk Massen (Novell), Roslyn Docktor (IBM), John Macri (IBM), Bob Sutor (IBM), Brian Burke (Microsoft), Stuart McKee (Microsoft), Leslie Tan (Microsoft), Ira Heffan (Goodwin Procter), Alan Cote (CoMA, SEC), Douglas Heintzman (IBM), Sam Hiser (Hiser-Adelstein), Linda Hamel (CoMA, ITD).

Purpose of Meeting:

§ Discuss importance of document format standards for state government

§ Better define what we mean by open formats

§ Identify practical approaches for moving forward

Meeting Highlights:

§ ITD and the Secretary of the Commonwealth have the legal authority to adopt electronic format standards for the Executive Department agencies. Those standards must meet UETA requirements, including the requirement that those with a right to see the document can open and read it and the requirement of fidelity (i.e. the document the reader sees must look the same as the document did when it was created).

§ There is no one definition of the term “open”; rather, there is a continuum of openness; individuals place themselves in the continuum from “closed” to “open” in a manner convenient to them.

§ Commonwealth needs to define criteria for the continuum of “openness” of electronic document formats acceptable for use in state government. Among the issues to be considered in defining criteria for openness are licensing, functionality, interoperability, and open process (including peer review) for creating and maintaining the standard on which the format is based. Practical issues for the Commonwealth to consider in choosing the degree of openness to adopt are migration, backward and forward compatibility, and the marketplace.

§ One commentator: openness has to do with how the standard has evolved over time. Standards are valuable because they are stable and predictable, and mature in a transparent, open environment.

§ Different approaches to identifying criteria for openness were presented by various participants. Criteria discussed included those used by the European Union; Ken Krechmer, Fellow, International Center for Standards Research, University of Colorado; and Microsoft.

§ The European Union has focused on archiving requirements, maximum freedom of action, refraining from imposing specific technologies on citizens, access to innovation, and encouraging European economic development.

§ Krechmer notes that there is no one definition of open standards, and that creators, implementers, and users of information technology standards often have very different ideas of what “open” means^{^[1]}.

§ Microsoft’s XML schema for Office 12 is designed to assure backward compatibility for the millions of customers that have documents created in previous versions of Office. The licensing approach for the schema is likely to be the same as the one for the schema used in Office 2003. MS’ concerns: include the evaporation of historical documents, and the need for those searching for documents to be able to find them through the use of metadata.

§ IP licensing is approached in various ways by both standards bodies and vendors. Whether a particular license is “open” is a function of where the reader is on the “openness continuum”.

§ Once it identifies a continuum of acceptable document format standards, the Commonwealth must address migration to these standards, and must draw up a migration roadmap.

§ At a minimum, the Commonwealth should adopt a document format standard that requires (1) standard character encoding, (2) use of XML and, (3) if there is a published schema, the ability of the document to be validated against such a schema.

§ Future-proofing what we do today is difficult and expensive. At a minimum, state government needs the cooperation of the vendors who own the formats you use, and the macros. The format government uses must have “fair use” capability beyond just viewing and reading.

§ Ultimate goal: The Commonwealth’s electronic records should be accessible over a long period of time, so that as desktops change, the data format will persist. As a means to that end, Commonwealth should adopt a document format standard based on open XML.

§ The XML open standard promises the greatest amount of flexibility and openness. However, the Commonwealth must ensure that it is used in a way that is compatible with its goals.

§ The Commonwealth needs to separate the document format discussion from the desktop discussion

Next Steps:

§ Identify a continuum of acceptable open document standards for the Commonwealth.

§ Revise the standards and publish the revision for public comment; then finalize the standards.

§ Draft an implementation plan providing a roadmap for migrating from our current state to one in which the continuum of acceptable open document standards is adhered to by Executive Department agencies.

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1. Specifically, Krechmner notes, standards creators typically consider a standard to be open if the creation of the standard follows the tenets of open meeting, consensus and due process; implementers of an existing standard would call a standard open when it serves the markets they wish, it is without cost to them, does not preclude further innovation (by them), does not obsolete their prior implementations, and does not favor a competitor; and users of an implementation of the standard would call a standard open when multiple implementations of the standard from different sources are available, when the implementation functions in all locations needed, when the implementation is supported over the user’s expected service life and when new implementations desired by the user are backward compatible to previously purchased implementations.

1. ^{^[1]}Specifically, Krechmner notes, standards creators typically consider a standard to be open if the creation of the standard follows the tenets of open meeting, consensus and due process; implementers of an existing standard would call a standard open when it serves the markets they wish, it is without cost to them, does not preclude further innovation (by them), does not obsolete their prior implementations, and does not favor a competitor; and users of an implementation of the standard would call a standard open when multiple implementations of the standard from different sources are available, when the implementation functions in all locations needed, when the implementation is supported over the user’s expected service life and when new implementations desired by the user are backward compatible to previously purchased implementations.

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