NEWS FLASH: a new Texas Bill for "Open Documents"

The Secretary of State of the Texas Legislature received a Bill (SB 446) yesterday (5 Feb 2007) stating the goal of requiring Texas State agencies (including the executive branch, the legislature, the courts and the schools) to conduct their work in an open document format.

The Bill is authored by Ruben Hinojosa (pronounced, "HI-no HO-sa") of the 15th Congressional Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa of District 20 of the State of Texas.

Timings

The Bill, if passed into law as drafted, would take effect December 1, 2007, at the end of this year.  It contains a provision requiring the Department of Information Resources to develop guidelines by September 1, 2008, for converting and storing existing documents in the open format, to inform on cost and other requirements wherever conversions are deemed necessary.

Definition of an "open document" format

The Bill establishes that agencies must specify for themselves an "open Extensible Markup Language based file format" for the creation, exchange or maitentance of their electronic documents. They must be able to receive such documents and "may not change documents to a file format used by only one vendor."   

This Bill provides a working definition of an open document format. According to the Bill, such a document format will be...

(1) interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications;

(2) published without restrictions or royalties;

(3) fully and independently implemented by multiple software providers on multiple platforms without any intellectual property reservations for necessary technology; and

(4) controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard.

These four criteria are sound, in my opinion. Presently ODF meets them.

As in Massachusetts, Microsoft may propose a format that meets these criteria and thus has in its power the chance to qualify a format that Texas state government agencies could use. However, the Microsoft Office Open XML formats -- as presently specifiied and developed under the Ecma consortium -- would not meet these criteria.

Comments

[unmukt]

It is a welcome sign

[Jerry]

The legislator is Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa rather than Ruben Hinojosa. The people they represent overlap, but Ruben Hinojosa is a congressman and Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa is a Texas State Senator.

[Sam Hiser]

Thanks for the correction, Jerry.

[Daniel]

Excellent! I hope that it will pass. It will be a big step in the right diection (away from proprietary formats).

[Die]

As much as I'd like to see this happen I have my doubts about it because of what happened in Massachusetts. If either state were to be successful in this I believe it would most likely have been Massachusetts. People need to start a writing, phoning and complaining to whoever might even remotely make this happen.

[Robert Halloran]

The arguments for government ODF migration are easy: public documents, public standard; avoid "single-source" contracts for software ie MS-Office; take control of upgrade cycles back from The Lock-in Vendor; avoid problems with legacy formats (the MA people were complaining about old WordPerfect docs in their justification for ODF); competition drives down cost and makes for more prudent spending of public funds.

Funny, most of those would apply just as well to the commercial sector, wouldn't they? Hmmmm.....

[Chris]

For a big agency (or any agency), this will save a ton of money, or money portioned to go to software could be used for other things like upgrades. Using OSS software like OpenOffice instead of MSOffice (except Outlook) is a big benefit for users. Now if only there were a viable alternative for Outlook as an Exchange client . . .

[Sam Hiser]

Thanks for your comment, Chris. What gets me up in the morning is knowing that the state government money that is saved on lock-in software will go -- fungibly speaking -- to hiring teachers in schools, for one much needed thing.

As for Outlook | Exchange, that is being replaced organically by webmail -- which, too, will grow enterprise legs above- as well as underground. And, barring that, we have our friends at Zimbra (e-mail) and Alfresco (collboration & portal) doing brisk business.

Their customer lists are in the 7-figure area now. They will soon recognize that those lists will need ODF Plugin and InfoSet API to get into the 8- and 9-figure range before webmail consumes everything.

[charles]

Perhaps we can encourage Ruben Hinojosa to sponsor such legislation at the federal level. Now is the time to move this issue in as many places (states, cities, universities) as possible. MS does not have the resources to efectively fight against real open standards on multiple fronts.

>>The legislator is Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa rather than Ruben Hinojosa. The people they represent overlap, but Ruben Hinojosa is a congressman and Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa is a Texas State Senator.<<

[md]

I wish Texas the best of luck. This really needs to happen, but Microsoft is going to fight it tooth and nail... and might "win", like they unfortunately did in Mass.

[Benjamin]

Texas is the most populous state to move toward ODF (and the second most populous in the nation), and has a sizable tech sector, so this makes a good endorsement for ODF.

Further, liberal states will want to emulate Massachusetts, and conservative states will want to emulate Texas, so pretty much every other state has a role model promoting ODF now.

[Jerry]

Representative Marc Veasey from Fort Worth has filed an identical bill in the Tx. House of Representatives - HB 1794. You can sign up to receive free e-mail notifications of the progress of SB 446 and HB 1794 at:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

[Bob]

In response to the comments by Sam Hiser.

I hope, I hope, I hope, that everyone is aware of Linux. Where OpenOffice and Evolution email are standard programs. Evolution email has M$ Exchange server access.

[Texas Newspapers]

Hi..just stopping by to say a Happy New Year...interesting post there, and i've bookmarked this blog too...keep up the good job ;)