Calif. CIO: File Format a Business Decision

Clark Kelso, the chief information officer for California, told ComputerWorld in an interview this month and released today, that his office will continue to analyze open file formats as a business decision despite a California bill that would require agencies there to use an open, XML-based format to store documents. "We’re trying to view this just as a plain-vanilla, nonpartisan, nonideological issue," he said.

Last month, a California legislator introduced the bill that would require agencies to use the file format so that public documents could be stored in a format that can be accessed decades from now. The requirement may have the consequence of favoring the Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications "pushed by vendors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc. as an alternative to the new Office Open XML format that Microsoft Corp. has developed for its Office 2007 software ... because it has already been certified and published as an open standard by the Geneva-based ISO standards body, and because it is used natively by software that is freely available," ComputerWorld reported. Minnesota and Texas are the only other states that have passed laws requiring open, XML-formats for documents.