The IT Council announced that Germany's federal government will gradually start using ODF. By 2010 all federal authorities should be able to receive, send, read and write documents in this electronic format. "Citizens, businesses and other public administrations will in the future be able to use it to exchange documents with the federal administration."

Germany's government's use of Open Document Format (ODF) for its electronic documents will lead to increased competition among IT vendors and improve interoperability, Hans Bernhard Beus, chairman of the government IT council, said in a statement published yesterday on the website of the Ministry of the Interior.

The council says that using ODF will help fulfil the German federal government's decision from July 2007 to increase competitiveness, use open document standards and promote open formats for document exchange.

The IT Council added it is observing "with interest" further development of open document formats. It mentions in particular the XML-based format of the Microsoft Office Open XML (OOXML). This competing ISO standard, originally developed by Microsoft, was published this November, after a very tumultuous ISO procedure. The European Commission is investigating allegations of irregularities in this process.

More information:

IT council announcement (in German)

Heise news item (in German)