Marcelo Thompson

Some very significant bodies of the Brazilian Government and government-owned corporations have just signed an agreement to adopt Open Document Format as their standard format for the exchange of electronic documents. While the agreement merely conveys their intention of adopting ODF, it also firms up their commitment to “plan, organize, and enable such policy in the federal government”, one official said.

The announcement happened during the “Electronic Government and Society International Congress (CONSEGI)“, which is taking place in Brasilia until tomorrow. It follows ISO and IEC’s final decision to reject the appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela, and adopt Microsoft’s OOXML as an ISO/IEC International Standard.

**Update** Andrew Updegrove brings us a perceptive analysis about the so-called ”CONSEGI Declaration”, which was signed by Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Paraguay, South Africa and Venezuela by the end of the event, in response to ISO/IEC’s decision mentioned above. As Upgrove notes, “[w]hat happened in the course of the OOXML adoption process has left such governments shaken by the realization that the type of democratic involvement and protection from undue vendor influence that should accompany the development of such standards, and ensure their free, unfettered use, cannot be delivered by the same systems that they have relied on in the past”.

Groklaw also has interesting inputs on the Declaration, and was particularly impressed — as so am I — with the following statement:

“Given the organisation’s inability to follow its own rules we are no longer confident that ISO/IEC will be capable of transforming itself into the open and vendor-neutral standards setting organisation which is such an urgent requirement. What is now clear is that we will have to, albeit reluctantly, re-evaluate our assessment of ISO/IEC, particularly in its relevance to our various national government interoperability frameworks. Whereas in the past it has been assumed that an ISO/IEC standard should automatically be considered for use within government, clearly this position no longer stands”.

You may also be interested in the first-hand impressions of Mr Jomar Silva, a member of the Brazilian Delegation who was present at the Ballot Resolution Meeting that took place in March. If so, follow this earlier Groklaw post, or Mr Silva’s own blog.