Summary: Dutch meeting promotes the use of the only interoperable document standard

● ODF Plugfest at The Hague

The Dutch government program, Netherlands in Open Connection, and the OpenDoc Society cosponsored the two-day ODF “plugfest” at the Royal Library in The Hague, 15-16 June 2009, where vendors and open source projects were able to test ODF capabilities with each other in real-world, collaborative scenarios. OASIS TC chairs, Bart Hanssens, (ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC), and Rob Weir (co-Chair ODF TC), participated and delivered presentations.

● Improving Interoperability ODF in Office Applications

Over more than forty organisations and a total of sixty representatives from businesses, public sector organisations, open source projects and research institutions, came together this Monday and Tuesday to improve the interoperability of their office applications on the implementation of the open standard Open Document Format (ODF) during the ODF Interoperability Workshop . The support for ODF as an open standard is required for Dutch government organisations in accordance with the actionplan Netherland Open in Connection . ODF is a modern and flexible exchange format for word processors, spreadsheet programs and presentation programs and offers an alternative to vendor specific file formats.

● New ODF Interoperability Initiatives Launched At Dutch Government Workshop (as PDF)

The Hague, June 17, 2009. New ODF interoperability initiatives were unveiled this week at an international conference organized by the Dutch government, which has mandated ODF for reading, writing, exchange and publication of documents and also initiated a requirement to ask for ODF when issuing or renewing IT contracts. The Dutch government program Netherlands in Open Connection (NOiV) and the OpenDoc Society cosponsored the two-day ODF “plugfest” at the Royal Library in The Hague, where vendors and open source projects were able to test their ODF capabilities with each other in real-world, collaborative scenarios.

● ODF and the Art of Interoperability

While OOXML-compliant software seems conspicuous by its absence, ODF goes from strength to strength: there is literally no contest between the rival standards in this respect.