[nzlug] Government Communication Formats

[Simon Bridge]

On Mon, 2008-04-14 at 12:56 +0300, Mathew Carley wrote:
> I don't see any mention of .DOC (or .DOCX, for that matter) being in the 
> policy for communication sent in a "locked format" - in both cases, PDF 
> is the standard. Perhaps a strongly worded document to the effect of 
> "While we may be the only ones having trouble opening your document, 
> government policy mandates that you are required to use PDF" is in order.
> 
Just requesting another copy in a suitable format, and a link to this
page "FYI" worked fine in my case.

I also got excuses - so I could answer each excuse with a reference to
the policy material. I also asked what would be a suitable format for a
reply (which this person did not understand... so I sent plain text.
Tempting as it was to use ODF.

"mandates" is probably a little strong in this case - these are
"guidelines" and the focus is on interoperability between government
sectors rather than communication with the public.

We have to play it cool or risk losing the moral high ground. If you
receive govt communication in a closed format, request an open one,
regardless of whether you can read it or not.

Works with other organisations too - especially if you are negotiating:
puts the other guy on the back foot and gives you more time to consider
while they are confused :)

BTW: Patent office publishes the abstracts exclusively in doc format.
Curious as there is nothing in them which requires the metadata (could
have been txt without loss of information) and ironic as it means that
NZ innovators must give MS money to register their patent. (The patents
themselves are pdf.) The rationale escapes me.