It now seems that ISO will vote in favor of accepting OOXML as a new open ISO-standard, and that the Norwegian vote did not tip the ballot.
But Norwegian OOXML-opponents still wants the Norwegian department of Ministry of Trade and Industry to look into the Norwegian process. The ministry has confirmed to newspaper Dagens Næringsliv that they have asked Standard Norge for information on how the OOXML-proccess was handled.
The Norwegian online debate on the OOXML-process has raged at an unprecedented level, after a controversial decicion by Standard Norge last friday when Standard Norge said yes to OOXML.
Since then, every article about the OOXML-process have been flooded by bitter, angry and frustrated Norwegian IT-professionals. Most of them seem to oppose the yes-vote, but there are several arguing in favor of OOXML as well.
Particular interesting, from a journalist’s point of view, is that many of the Norwegian committee members have actively engaged in the forum debate. Both the chairman Steve Pepper and Microsoft’s hired representative, Shahzad Rana, have actively engaged in the discussion. Rana has also written extensively on the subject on his own blog, and so has several other members of the committee.
Steve Pepper, the committe chairman, faxed a formal protest to ISO. He asked for the Norwegian vote to be suspended because of what he claims were irregularities in the process committed by Standard Norge.
Standard Norge defended their position in a statement published on their homepage. Microsoft’s Stephen McGibbon has posted an English translation that seems to be correctly translated. Standard Norge points out that Steve Pepper has opposed OOXML, and that he therefore cannot be considered a neutral chairman.
The leader of the committee has an important role succeed in creating agreement, but the leader of the committee had already in 2007 flagged his position which meant that he could no longer meet the criteria for neutrality. He had therefore renounced his task to lead the committees consideration of OOXML and Standad Norges deputy managing director therefore led meetings for consideration of this matter in the committee.
Pepper denies that he was unwilling to change his view on OOXML, and claims the problem to be Microsoft’s unwillingness to make the necessary adjustments.
Microsoft also got support from their Norwegian partner Acos. In an open letter, signed by Ivar Wessel Thomassen, Acos director and member of the SN/K 185 committee, they state that the decicion made by Standard Norge was both “wise and correct”.
Acos is a software company that creates portal and document management systems. They have more than 250 Norwegian Public companies on their customers list, and this makes them one of the largest players in this Norwegian niche. The software company claims that all these customers use Microsoft Office, and that the OOXML-format is better suited for most of these customers because it handles all the legacy formats.
The Norwegian Minister of Government Administration and Reform, Heidi Grande Røys, have previously decided that all Norwegan government offices must publish all external information in open formats such as HTML, PDF or ODF:
- HTML is the primary format for public information on the Internet
- PDF is mandatory for all documents required to maintain original display and layout
- ODF must be used for all documents ment to be edited after download, such as forms to be filled in by users
This requirement kicks in from 1.st of january 2009 for governmental bodies, and the minister works to impose these requirement on the municipalities as well.
Public agencies are free to publish in any additional formats, as long as the information is also published in the appropriate above stated formats. They may also use any format they want for internal collaboration.
The question now that OOXML seems to be accepted as a new ISO-standard, is whether it will be added to the list. That remains to be seen.
- The minister is free to choose what formats the government should use, and it’s clear that she can choose to not accept OOXML, says Helge Kvamdal, press advisor at the Norwegian Ministry of Government Administrationd and Reform, to digi.no on monday.
Representatives from the Norwegian OOXML-opposition, such as Geir Isene of Freecode and Trond Heier of Linpro, confirms that the next fight will be on convincing the minister not to accept OOXML as one of the officially supported public formats.
