South Africa Adopts ODF
Tectonic breaks the good news: South Africa has adopted ODF as its government standard data format!
“Tectonic spoke to Bob Jolliffe of the department of science and technology who was part of the working group that compiled the document. He was optimistic about the MIOS document’s implementation, saying that it now cleared the playing field for the adoption of government’s free and open source software policy.
“Jolliffe noted two key features of the document, that of what defines an open standard and the inclusion of the ODF standard.”
The South Africa plan is to adopt ODF as its open data format standard now, and then use the freedom that allows to migrate its software applications to open source options over the next two years.
Its own definition of an open standard requires multiple implementations be available, which rules out MSOOXML immediately.