French government report lauds ODF

A member of the French Parliament has prepared a report for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin which recommends that France mandate the use of the OpenDocument format, or ODF.

According to French news reports, the study was commissioned one year ago and recently presented to de Villepin by Tarn Bernard Carayon.

He recommends that the French government "propose to its European partners to systematically favor open standards and, as the first example, to mandate the international ISO format ODF for the creation and diffusion of all official document exchange at the European level."

Carayon notes that the standardization of ODF "authorizes its use without risk by commercial and government bodies and promotes the development of current software which adheres to the format."

In addition, he argued that free and open-source software can provide French businesses with an economic benefit.

Although a relatively young standard, OpenDocument has found interest among government users.

The state of Massachusetts in the US has been a high-profile example of a government which committed to OpenDocument because, among other reasons, it was not controlled by a single vendor.

The Danish government is also actively investigating the use of ODF-based software.

The Danish Open Source Business Association in August prepared a report comparing the relative costs of migrating to OpenOffice, which supports ODF, or upgrading to new versions of Microsoft Office.

An InfoWorld report on Thursday quoted a high-ranking Danish government IT official, saying that the study has opened up a debate over the use of standards but that Denmark is still studying the relative costs and savings of a potential switch.