Fraunhofer to chair new DIN working group - "Instead of either/or we're enabling interoperability between various document standards".
DIN's Information Technology Standardization Committee's newly formed 'Translation of Document Formats' working group has started work to create an in-depth Technical Report detailing how to translate between the two document standards Office Open XML (Ecma 376) and ODF 1.0 (ISO/IEC 26300) in order to support interoperability between the two formats.
The new working group's convenor is Gerd Schürmann, head of the prestigious eGovernment unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS in Berlin.
“Today there’s no longer any reason why we should have to make a straight choice between the two standards,”
Gerd Schürman, head of the eGovernment unit, Fraunhofer FOKUS
According to Fraunhofer's press release, "The Working Group expects to publish in mid-2008 a final DIN Technical Report containing perspectives, proposals and models for the translation between the Office Open XML and ODF 1.0 standards to support interoperability. The Working Group will publish intermediate reports to allow anyone to follow the progress of the work."
This is a very welcome development. Governments are subject to the most intense lobbying I've ever seen over a technology policy issue to make an exclusive choice. It's great to see an organisation with the reputation of Fraunhofer coming out and stating clearly that this isn't about either/or and that interoperability is possible, and indeed necessary.
As Fraunhofer's Gerd Schürman rightly says,
“Today there’s no longer any reason why we should have to make a straight choice between the two standards."
In other words, this isn't a zero sum game. The lobbying efforts of IBM, and increasingly Sun Microsystems, aim to secure lock-out for any choice in document formats regardless of the inefficiency or cost that such a policy implies. Government policy makers understand this and are choosing not to see the issue as the zero sum game that IBM and Sun seek to present it as, developing policies that are technology neutral and really promote competition and choice. Belgium's policy is generally misrepresented by the ODF lobby. Denmark's proposed policy is technology neutral, and is currently being hotly contested by IBM and Sun who have again raised interoperability as a barrier to sensible technology nrutral policy positions. DIN's initiative will be welcome news therefore to all who are genuinely concerned about this issue and will find reassurance in Schürman's words, not least because he is the head of the eGovernment unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems.
" ... the ‘Translation of Document Formats’ Working Group aims to describe how interoperability between the two formats can be achieved. We know from the scenarios of the Fraunhofer FOKUS eGovernment Lab just how important it is to allow for the coexistence of a variety of open standards – and we can prove that seamless workflows involving a range of different technologies, products and standards are truly possible in the real world.”
All in all this is a super development and I am delighted to see it. I am sure that many will join me in welcoming Fraunhofer and DIN's initiative, and I hope and trust IBM and Sun will be amongst them.