FW: Notes from Open Formats Summit

Below are the notes from the meeting held at the State 
House back in June. Apparently they were never distributed as planned. 
FYI.

 

Regards,

 

Mary

From: Boldman, Claudia (ITD) 
[mailto:] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 
5:11 PM
To: Cote, Alan (SEC); ; 
; Hamel, Linda (ITD); ; 
; ; ; 
; Micolonghi, Emily (ANF); ; Boldman, 
Claudia (ITD); ; ; Nardone, 
Stephen (ITD); ; Phillips, Victoria (ITD); 
; ; ; Vaverchak, 
Timothy (ITD)
Cc: Quinn, Peter J. (ITD); McLellan, Christine 
(ITD)
Subject: 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. 

 

*****************************************

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.