Open Document Format could find its way as becoming an open standard for e-governance projects by the Indian government and help its supporters grab key government IT business.
Move will help supporters of the open standard grab key government IT business contracts.
Open Document Format (ODF) could find its way as becoming an open standard for e-governance projects by the Indian government and help its supporters grab key government IT business, according to government officials and industry sources.
The recent draft policy on open standards which is open to review till November 26, if comes out in favour of ODF would help its supporters to compete with Microsoft-backed Office Open XML (OOXML).
ODF is a file format for electronic office documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents and this format was initially developed by Sun Microsystems.
If either of the standards is chosen in the final validation, then vendors for the e-governance projects need to support all the data in that standard only.
Even if ODF is chosen as a standard, then “Microsoft is willing to work on interoperability of the two standards to help vendors like Tata Consultancy Services to bid for government IT projects and web portals,” officials close to the development said.
Recently, Microsoft and ODF supporter Novell announced an investment to build a “bridge between open source and proprietary software to deliver interoperability for organisations operating mixed-source IT environments”.
Microsoft India was not immediately available for comments.
“The work on the standard is already going on and officials are working on open standards … the whole validation and adoption of the final policy would be out in three months,” a ministry of information technology official associated with the development told DNA Money.
In India, OOXML is backed by players like Microsoft, TCS, Infosys and Nasscom, whereas, ODF is supported by IIT-Mumbai, IIT-Delhi, IIM-Ahmedabad, Red Hat, IBM and Sun Microsystems.
“The ODF adoption for open standards by the IT ministry would lead to a equal participation for bidding in e-governance projects from non-proprietary players … that would lead to more business,” an official of a company supporting ODF told DNA Money.
"It is a much bigger issue than ODF versus OOXML standard, it is an issue of technical sovereignty. The open standard for e-governance projects should be royalty-free for life and even minuscule amount should not be charged for its use as higher volumes mean billions of dollars of tax payers money … it is the citizen data and should not be lost in interoperability among standards," Jaijit Bhattacharya, country director of government strategy for Sun Microsystems India said.
vivek_s@dnaindia.net 
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}