Sanders expert report is ready

Helge Sander, Danish Minister of Science and Technology earlier this year asked an expert committee to look into the technical and legal implications of the introduction of two standards for documents in the government. The report is now ready.

The committee consists of

• Professor dr. jur. Mads Bryde Andersen, University of Copenhagen (Chairman)
• Associate Professor Jens Hørlück, Aarhus University
• IT centerchef Jorgen Kristensen, Association of Local IT managers
• Professor Kim V. Andersen, CBS
• Professor Mogens Kühn Pedersen, CBS

The report is mainly a review and summation of said words in the matter and the committee does not take their own opinion. It seems a little disappointing, because the committee members probably could find something more meaningfull to do than to quote what others have said and written.

The only new topic the report brings to light is a recommendation of the PDF format for final documents. One detail that has previously been completely overlooked in the political debate. The few conclusions in the report is so vague that it is almost comical. Among other things, the conclusion is ...

In summary, the Committee believes that interoperability between ODF and OOXML continues to represent a challenge.

It is another way of saying ...

It is not possible to achieve full interoperability between OOXML and ODF. The two formats is simply not interoperabile.

It is, I believe so uncritical that it becoms self-contradictory in some areas. Among others the report includes Ramboll Management TCO reports quite indiscriminate, despite the fact that these reports are made on a critisized base and criticized by many. The reports from Ramboll are by many regarded as worthless. One of the TCO report's assumptions were that every document needed ten minutes to convert. A prerequisite as Ramboll Management itself points out is a very sensitive parameter: Changing this parameter just a little bit, will change the conclusion in the report.

Expert Committee's report emphasizes that the imposition of the PDF format for final documents will end up with only a small part of the existing documents should be converted. It disappoints me very much that the report does not identify that this observation makes TCO report by Ramboll Management inappropriate in context.

In addition, the ISO approval of OOXML is concidered as the final conclusion that the OOXML is an open and appropriate standard. This despite the fact that even Dansih Standards recognizes that the approval process was perhaps not completely clean and OOXML might not be quite as qualified as it seems.

The experts completely ignores the world around us. I believe that we in Denmark can't take such decisions without first looking around us. The countries which we usually compare ourselves with, may have been through similar problems. But the report is also completely ignoring this.

Repport from IT-og Teleagency : http://budurl.com/ekspert
Computerworld.dk: http://www.computerworld.dk/art/49464

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