Fwd: Meeting at MA CIO on Open Formats for Documents

[Mary McRae <marypmcrae@gmail.com>]

Hello everyone,

  Since Michael is on vacation, I'm forwarding this to the TC on
behalf of Patrick Gannon.

Regards,

Mary

------------

Michael,

I just wanted to let you know that Mary and I attended the meeting held
yesterday by the MA IT Department on document formats.

The focus of the meeting was for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to
gather input from the industry on issues related to the formation of
their policy on "Open Formats" for business office documents used or
produced by the Commonwealth.
http://www.mass.gov/portal/index.jsp?pageID=itdsubtopic&L=3&L0=Home&L1=Polic
ies%2c+Standards+%26+Legal&L2=Open+Standards&sid=Aitd


The meeting was kicked off by Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration
and Finance, for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
http://www.mass.gov/eoaf/

The meeting was lead by Peter Quinn, CIO of the Information Technology
Department, who has to make and implement the decisions around the topic.
http://www.mass.gov/portal/index.jsp?pageID=itdhomepage&L=1&L0=Home&sid=Aitd

In addition to other staff from MA ITD, were representatives from IBM (4),
Microsoft (3), Sun Microsystems (1), HP (1), CA (1), Novell (1) along with
the leader of OpenOffice.org ((Sam Hiser) and a couple other
consultants and IP attorneys.  Nick Gall of Gartner (formerly of Meta
Group) facilitated the meeting.

The MA ITD will send out meeting notes later.

A number of key requirements were discussed around just what the ideal
open format should be.  I was extremely pleased and proud of how Mary
McRae was able to clearly articulate some of the basic issues related
to document formats and the Open Document Format OASIS Standard, as
she related her experience as a document management consultant and
expert in this field. Peter Quinn clearly appreciated her expertise
and expressed his thanks for both of out attendance and helpful
suggestions.  It was also clear that Secretary Kriss favored open
standards developed through an open "peer review" process.

Peter Quinn's group will be putting forward a revised statement on open
document formats at some point in the future for public review and
comment. We'll be sure to pass those announcements along to you and
the OASIS ODF TC.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

--
Patrick Gannon
President & CEO
OASIS
630 Boston Road
Billerica, MA  01821
+1.978.667.5115 x201  - office
+1.978.761.3546       - mobile
www.oasis-open.org