[clug] weird tender requirements

[Mike Carden]

Speaking as someone who is trying to change the Australian government
file format monoculture from within, I can say that in the majority of
commonwealth agencies there is little or no thought given to the fact
that their 'choice' of desktop environment imposes file format
constraints on themselves and on others.

While agencies *should* be encouraged to accept standards based open
formats, AGIMO is yet to fire up on the subject and it's fair to say
that even if they did, they'd be pretty much ignored. I broached the
subject at a meeting of commonwealth government CIOs back in June and
they all laughed at the idea of moving to open formats.

I suggest that when you submit something, supply it in a format that
MS Office can read, but don't use dotdoc.

You could attach a note to the efffect that they ought to accept ODF
or PDF or XML or <file format of choice> but I'm guessing you'd like a
chance to actually win the tender, yeah?

:-)

MC