Release Date: July 9th 2015
Contacts: Vide director-general MING-FEN CHUANG , deputy section chief PING-SHIH KO
Contact Tel.: 02-23165300#6802; #4987
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Promote Government’s Open Document Standards
Develop New Value for Document Circulation
Open data is a vital administrative direction for the government, and the most beneficial standards for presenting the document to the people have a significant influence on the people. The Executive Yuan announced the policy of “Implementation Project for Promoting ODF-CNS15251 as the Government’s Standard Document Format” on June 5th of this year (2015), hoping that all industries may jointly promote the ODF (Open Document Format), as well as participate in the open document standard format of the government in order to enhance our soft power.
ODF is a type of XML structure, featuring portability, readability and the document’s self-descriptive characteristics, and it is further advantageous towards permanent preservation of the file documents. ODF became the international standard (ISO/IEC26300) in November of 2006, and countries from worldwide have already gradually placed more attention towards the development and applications of open document format in response to facilitate circulation of the documents, and taking the open standard as the priority when purchasing products. The British Government announced in July of 2014 that the nation would adopt the ODF official document standards, turning official document files from specific document software to open source software.
Taiwan stipulated ODF standard as the national standard CNS15251 in January of 2009, with Hualien County, Yilan County, the Ministry of Finance as well as the Education Department, New Taipei City Government promoting the solutions for document file freeware respectively, to save the authorization fees of specific document software.
It is the trend in cooperation with the government’s open data policy and in response to the data platform as well as diversified carrier, making it convenient for the public to download governmental data from websites, stimulating the data exchange between governments as well as government and enterprises. Meanwhile, enterprises and the public may also utilize any carrier to open governmental file data. Therefore, the open document format ODF-CNS15251 featuring high compatibility for the promotion, and suitable for various operating systems as well as beneficial for long-term preservation is the effective solution.
The duration for “Implementation Project for Promoting ODF-CNS15251 as the Government’s Standard Document Format” is from 2015 to 2017, with specific goals been established for each year. In 2015, the editable documents provided for download from websites of the various government organizations should support ODF, while PDF document format for non-editable documents. In 2016, the data exchange between the systems of the various government organizations, as well as the government and enterprises must support ODF. In 2017, the comprehensive promotion of the various government organizations to use editable ODF document software will be conducted.
Moreover, in order to encourage the various government organizations, schools, state-run enterprises, municipal governments and county (city) governments (including the subordinate organizations) to jointly promote ODF, the National Development Council will organize explanation sessions for the promotions in different stages, seed teacher cultivation, counselling, consultation and educational training in order to complete ODF application environment. Moreover, the choice of document application software will be handed back to the public with the priority of serving the people mainly in document applications and across-agencies data exchange, thereby reducing the inconvenience caused by the exchange of file formats, and providing even more convenient e-Government services in taking the first step towards open government.