Open Doc bill assigned to committee
As mentioned earlier, SB446 is a bill introduced by Senator Hinjosa of the Texas Senate requiring the use of open document formats for electronic state documents. The bill has been read and sent to the State Affairs committee.
For a bit of background, Massachusetts has had a similar requirement in place for some time (2005). See this article for a bit more detail. The goal of open document requirements is usually twofold — to save money and to encourage access.
Saving money comes by preventing the State from getting locked in to a specific format. This gives the State the freedom to choose vendors of, for example, word processing programs based on price and not on the ubiquity of their proprietary format. For a concrete example, take Microsoft’s dominance with Word and its closed ‘.doc’ format. By closed, I mean (without going into too much detail) that non-Microsoft software has difficulty opening, writing, and saving the files. State agencies have little option but to use Word for their desktop computers — and consequently they must pay Microsoft licensing fees. Using a format for saving the file that everyone can use (an ‘open format’) encourages competition in the software to read, write, and save files.
States, like all governments, have a duty to ensure access to its documents by its citizens. Using one specific closed format, such as ‘.doc’, results in requiring to a certain extent that the public must use the same program (Word) in order to read the files. Word can be expensive, and requiring its use can be a hurdle. In addition, the State has a duty to archive their information. If they use a format that only one company can read, it can be difficult or cost-prohibitive to ensure access to the public when that format becomes outdated.
The nice thing about requiring open document formats is that there exists an open source solution for word processing — Open Office, or for those of you on a Mac (like me) NeoOffice. These programs are free (as in ‘free beer’) to download and use, and (IMO) match the functionality of Word and other similar word processing programs. They by default save in open formats so that the docs may be accessed by other vendors.
For some implementation issues of these kind of requirements, see the following posts by Scott Brown regarding implementation of the Clean Government Amendment, which did not pass (for other reasons), in the City of Austin. [Link1] & [Link2].
I think that moving Texas to open formats is a great idea. Texas is a huge market, and hopefully that will trigger some moves towards openness in other states. Links regarding who is on the State Affairs committee and when they meet, after the fold.
The committee meets next Monday, but have not scheduled to discuss this bill (though of some interest to readers, they will discuss SB90 regarding email ballots for overseas military personnel).
Keep up with the action on the bill here.
Committee members and their websites:
- Sen. Robert Duncan
- Sen. Tommy Williams
- Sen. John Carona
- Sen. Rodney Ellis
- Sen. Troy Fraser
- Sen. Chris Harris
- Sen. Mike Jackson
- Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr.
- Sen. Leticia Van de Putte
Membership list here.
Committee meeting times are available here.
This Monday’s meeting announcement is here.