Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts released its Enterprise Technical Reference Model on the State’s website on Wednesday. This version “incorporates a new discipline for data formats within the information domain.”

The State will support the newly ratified Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument : a file format based on XML, as the standard for its office documents.

PCWorld reports : “Microsoft Office and other productivity suites such as Lotus Notes and WordPerfect that Massachusetts government agencies currently use support proprietary document formats. Suites that support OpenDocument include OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice, and IBM Workplace.”

The target date for implementation is January 1, 2007.

“While a number of government agencies across the world have expressed plans to drop Microsoft and other proprietary products in favor of open-source and open-standard technologies, Massachusetts is the first major public-sector institution to do so in the United States.”

Microsoft Monitor says : “Then there is the European Union, which also backs the OpenDocument format. A stone here, a stone there sometimes is enough to set off a landslide. Massachusetts could be just one of many governments supporting OpenDocument format. Microsoft would be foolhardy not to take seriously any government’s mandate of OpenDocument as ‘open,’ and rejecting Office file formats as ‘closed.’ ”