BE: ICT advisory body joins group to help ODF developers
The Belgian Federal ICT advisory body Fedict joined other members of standard organisation Oasis in a new committee to assist developers of office software to create applications that conform to the Open Document Format (ODF).
The new committee "will work to ensure that the growing number of ODF-compliant applications are able to interoperate and conform to the standard", Oasis, the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, explained in a statement.
Fedict is one of at least ten Oasis members in this new committee. The organisations quoted Fedict interoperability expert Bart Hanssens: "Fedict actively promotes the use of open standards as a means to improve interoperability and ensure information longevity. Uniting experts from leading implementers, governments and organisations throughout the world, the committee will tangibly improve the interoperability of ODF solutions, benefiting both citizens and companies."
The first two meetings of the committee took place in October. During the first meeting Hanssens was elected as chair.
Other governmental organisations joining the new group are the US Department of Defense and the South Africa Department of Science and Technology. IT companies such as IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Google, Novell and Red Hat are also part of the committee.
The ISO-approved ODF specifies an international open standard for electronic documents. It has been approved as a document standard in many EU member states such as Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden and The Netherlands.
More information:
Oasis statement
Committee mailing lists
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