Home Office Not Adopting ODF Internally

[denisemcdoogal]

Home Office Not Adopting ODF Internally

Summary

The Home Office is Not Adopting ODF Internally - despite published commitments to do so. GDS opens standards process has stopped chasing to ensure it happens.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-office-open-document-format-adoption-plan/home-office-open-document-format-adoption-plan

Category

• [ ] Data
• [*] Document
• [ ] Technical
• [ ] Other Suggestions

Problem

The Home Office, like many other central government departments, published plans to phase adoption of the mandatory ODF open standard.

Here are the plans: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-office-open-document-format-adoption-plan/home-office-open-document-format-adoption-plan

Adoption of ODF was not just about giving citizens using government digital services a choice over document formats and software (i.e. not imposing and favouring Microsoft) but also about dismantling the internal lock-in. That's why the blogs and published plans were forced to include internal adoption.

The Home Office has made zero attempts to adopt ODF.

There is no senior understanding, nor prioritisation, of this published commitment.

There is no longer any push from GDS / Cabinet Office to ensure departments stick to their plans to phase adoption of ODF internally.

[edent]

As per our terms of use an uncivil and misleading comment from user kunnington was removed.

[edent]

We've contacted the Home Office and are awaiting a response.

In the meantime, I notice that many (but not all) of their publications are in ODF:

• Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables Majority ODS, one CSV.
• Workforce management information, 2017 all ODS.
• Modern slavery victims: referral and assessment forms Majority ODT, two HTML.
• Counting rules for recorded crime Majority PDF, also available in ODS.

There are some exceptions:

• Fire statistics data tables Majority in XSLX - two datasets in ODS.
• Country returns guide Only available in XSLX.
• Drug misuse: findings from the 2016 to 2017 CSEW Majority in PDF, data only in XSLX.

I'll update this issue once I receive a response from the Home Office.

[Lawrence-G]

Some evidence that the situation has improved. country returns https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/country-returns-guide and Fires statistics https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-incident-level-datasets now in ODS format I'm closing this issue but will continue to monitor situation.