As noted on my blog, I attended my caucus tonight, and decided to present a resolution for mandating the use of ISO-approved open standards for all new government documents and all being newly converted to electronic form, mentioning ODF as the current best option but leaving room to consider others as appropriate in the future. My precinct easily passed the resolution, although for many of them it was the first they had heard of the issue.<br>
<br>I was wondering if anyone else had similar resolutions brought up in their precinct, and if so, what was the result? The only concern raised against mine was wondering what the potential cost would be, although I think we have a solid argument there in that it would cost essentially nothing to implement open formats in a forward-only manner, and the real cost only comes in with retroactively converting existing documents (and the prioritization of my resolution was worded accordingly), and regardless would be far less than the cost of trying to recover data after a vendor went bankrupt, changed its terms, or any other similar drastic blocking event to current documents.<br>
<br>Given that open document standards have been proposed twice already in the Minnesota Legislature (but been ignored as a low priority), and enjoyed increasing success in being passed into law in other states and countries, I think we have an opportunity to make a significant push for this in Minnesota in the coming year. Additionally, the benefits of open formats provide a great starting point for selling the benefits of open source software in government usage as well (state agencies, legislators, ***public schools!***, etc.), which is another thing that I would very much like to see us get involved in in the coming months and years.<br>
<br>So, I wanted to take the opportunity of this local caucus night to see where other people around the state were at with respect to standardized, free, open, non-proprietary formats in government office documents, and start getting people talking about how we might go about making a significant publicity push on the issue with the common population as well as gathering support from local and state representatives. Let the ideas flow!<br clear="all">
<br>-- <br>Tony Yarusso<br><a href="http://tonyyarusso.com/">http://tonyyarusso.com/</a>