Public administrations feel no need for interoperability, since the vast majority is using the same office suite, finds Andreas Kawohl, project leader on open standards at the IT department at the city council of Freiburg. "To our users, interoperability means nothing."

Kawohl was one of the speakers at the ODF plugfest, hosted by Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, which took place in Berlin on 14 and 15 July.

Freiburg's city council in 2007 decided to use the open document format ODF for its electronic documents. The city also wants to become less dependent on IT vendors: many of the 2500 civil administrators now use Open Office, an open source suite of office tools. If needed, the staffers can revert to using a proprietary alternative.

Freiburg finds that poor support for ODF in office applications other than Open Office, is impeding its use. And even with Open Office, ODF documents created in earlier versions of this suite, are not always opened correctly in modern versions. "This can have serious consequences, when dealing with contracts, land transactions and purchase agreements. Backwards compatibility is key to the acceptance of ODF."

"Two decades of monoculture in office applications mean there is no pressure on interoperability", says Kawohl. About 10 percent of the civil servants in Freiburg exchange electronic documents with other public authorities, and to them, the use of ODF results in frustration. In spite of existing regulations by the Federal IT Council, there is no current practice for handling ODF within federal agencies. So, finding out if other public administrations are able to handle the ODF documents, "is a matter of trying and finding out".

More information:
ODF Plugfest (Berlin)
Kawohl's presentation "ODF, The Interoperability Challenge" (pdf)