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A Strategy for Openness Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State Part III-B: Results of Request for Public Comments

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A Strategy for Openness Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State Part III-B: Results of Request for Public Comments A Strategy for Openness Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State Part III-B: Results of Request for Public Comments Submitted to: The Honorable David A. Paterson, Governor The Honorable Joseph L. Bruno, Temporary President of the Senate The Honorable Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the Assembly Executive Co-Sponsors Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart Christine Ward New York State Chief Information Officer and Director, New York State Department of Education New York State Office for Technology and Office of the Assistant Commissioner for Archives & Records New York State Chief Information Officer and New York State Archivist May 2008 A STRATEGY FOR OPENNESS PART III-B: PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM INDIVIDUALS PAGE 30 OF 638 Part I – Executive Summary (Separate Document) Part II – Supporting Documentation (Separate Document) Part III - Results of Request for Public Comments Table of Contents Part III-A - REQUEST FOR PUBLIC COMMENTS and SUMMARY OF COMMENTS ......................... Page 1 Part III-B - PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM INDIVIDUALS..........................Page 29 Part III-C - PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM GOVERNMENT................................................................ Page 152 Part III-D - PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM NON-PROFITS................................................................. Page 235 Part III-E - PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM COMMERCIAL ENTITIES.................................................. Page 296 A STRATEGY FOR OPENNESS PART III-B: PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM INDIVIDUALS PAGE 31 OF 638 Part III-B Public Comments Received: Individual Responses (59 comments received) With the exception of formatting and correction of obvious and minor spelling errors, the substantive comments are printed verbatim with any other errors or omissions intact. Salutations and individually identifying information have been REDACTED. Dates and times of comment receipt refer to when the comment arrived in the CIO/OFT e-mailbox created for this study. For any RFPC comments received slightly late, none were so late that they could not be considered for this report. B. INDIVIDUAL RESPONSES INDIVIDUAL # 1: [INDIVIDUAL'S NAME REDACTED]: Tuesday12/18/2007 8:02 PM If you keep records in OOXML, better referred to as MSXML, I will be unable to read them. Many experts have commented on the incomplete and contradictory nature of OOXML and how this will prevent any vendor but Microsoft from implementing editors and readers that work. Only people with the newest version of Microsoft OS and readers are able to use OOXML today and this is not going to change. If your goal is to have a vendor neutral implementation that provides document permanency, you will use ODF or some other ISO standard. ODF was created by a consortium of top notch tech companies and has already has multiple implementations. It is likely that this standard will continue to work for decades. OOXML, on the other hand, will probably do no better than previous Microsoft formats. If those were worth anything, you would not be having this debate. I hope that the state of New York adopts sane document format as agencies like the FAA have. OOXML will cost your citizens much and fail to meet any of your purported goals. INDIVIDUAL # 2: [INDIVIDUAL'S NAME REDACTED]: Tuesday12/18/2007 9:04 PM Please do not trust Microsoft with their OOXML format. While they try to appear open, it is a mean for Microsoft to lock in their Office format. Please listen to IBM and their support of ODF. IBM has been a staunch supporter of open standards in which ANY office applications can use the format. Let the ODF be the standard because it is the best choice for an unrestricted format that other competing programs will utilize. INDIVIDUAL # 3: [INDIVIDUAL'S NAME REDACTED]: Tuesday12/18/2007 9:14 PM Open standards need to be endorsed by more than one corporation. ODF is the only reasonable choice. A STRATEGY FOR OPENNESS PART III-B: PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM INDIVIDUALS PAGE 32 OF 638 INDIVIDUAL # 4: [INDIVIDUAL'S NAME REDACTED]: Tuesday12/18/2007 9:16 PM Question 2. As far as reading documents, PDF is clearly the best way to distribute electronics records. If you want to guarantee that your data/documents are displayed exactly as you want them, put them in a standard format like PDF. Please do not succumb to the Microsoft "standard" OOXML. Sure, plenty of people use Word documents, but Microsoft's claim that OOXML is the new standard couldn't be further from the truth. OOXML does not follow standard and "open" practices and formats. You need not look any further than the fact that even Microsoft's own products on different platforms not only have difficulty opening these documents, but even when they do open them, they do not always appear the same way. Question 3. Standards, standards, standards. PDF is a standard. Use that when the general public needs only to read your documents. When it comes time to let the general public complete forms, ODF would be a much better choice than OOXML. ODF is a standard used across several platforms and with several applications. The truly open nature of the format allows much better use across platforms and applications. Question 4. Same as before, PDF and ODF are the best document formats to get the job done reliably. Question 5. Same as before, PDF and ODF are the best document formats to get the job done reliably. Question 6-9. Same as above. Question 10. Stick with standard formats rather than proprietary formats. Question 11-14. Same as above, read up on ODF vs OOXML (but go with ODF in the end!) INDIVIDUAL # 5: [INDIVIDUAL'S NAME REDACTED]: Tuesday12/18/2007 9:25 PM I interact with and do business with New York State government. I would like to contribute the following comment as a business person concerned with government costs and interoperability. I feel very strongly that the ODT/Oasis/Openoffice office document standards be given special consideration as the standard document format for government interaction. I would like to posit the following reasons: 1) There is no vendor preference given when choosing this standard. Other office-suite players have every opportunity to support this standard and, indeed, with existing plugins, they already do. 2) It lowers the economic barriers to community interaction with government. There is no "technology tax" for citizens to play to simply read and write the documentation of their government. 3) The "free" toolset available in Openoffice is feature-rich and more than satisfies the current needs of government file interchange. This would lower government costs right off the bat. A STRATEGY FOR OPENNESS PART III-B: PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM INDIVIDUALS PAGE 33 OF 638 4) Long-term storage and compatibility is not as difficult with ODT as it would be with Microsoft Office. The Microsoft Office standard is highly dependent on the version of Microsoft office and, indeed, on the platform for which that program is written. There is a long history of difficulty in opening Microsoft Office documents with different versions of the office suite even on the same platform. OpenOffice/ODT is an open standard and not subject to the vagaries of platform and specific versions of the software. 5) Openoffice/ODT is platform independent, allowing documents to be shared on nearly every commercial and non-commercial computer operating system. No other standard boasts this. 6) There is no other truly open standard for document access. OOXML, a competing standard, from Microsoft purports to be open, but is actually quite closed in its internals (indeed, part of its specification refers to Microsoft Office as the definition of the ruleset for opening and manipulating the documents). I certainly hope that you choose to use openoffice/odt/oasis document formats for your governmental standard. I can only see upside to this for government budgets, community involvement, and a resulting positive economic impact. INDIVIDUAL # 6: [INDIVIDUAL'S NAME REDACTED]: Tuesday12/18/2007 9:26 PM I have no vested interest in the issue of which document format the state of new york adopts, but I still will put forth my opinion. In my short life, on multiple instances, I have run into problems when data (a document, a spreadsheet, a database, or just data records) were stored in a proprietary format and the proprietor stopped supporting this format. In these cases, data were sometimes irretrievable, and at other times retrievable only with great difficulty. For long-term records, such as those a whole state may want to keep, I imagine this would be a major concern. The Open Document Format seems less likely to produce these headaches, because, in the worst case scenario (if suddenly previous software used to interface with the documents becomes defunct), it will be easier to recover the data if it is in ODF format: 1. the ODF standard is regulated by an independent body, and the format is clearly specified. 2. source code for reading the ODF format is freely available. Even if everyone writing software that uses ODF stops writing this software, it will be easy for someone else to look at the relevant bits of source-code and figure out how to decypher the files. I don't know what other factors are under consideration, but from my limited experience, it seems that ease and independence when trying to access valuable state data is of utmost importance. INDIVIDUAL # 7: [INDIVIDUAL'S NAME REDACTED]: Tuesday12/18/2007 9:46 PM Question 2) Relevant records and documents should be stored in a publicly-accessible and searchable database. This will facilitate open distribution of information. A STRATEGY FOR OPENNESS PART III-B: PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM INDIVIDUALS PAGE 34 OF 638 Question 3) To facilitate interoperability, documents should be stored in open formats that cannot contribute to "vendor lock-in". A vendor-specific format such as Microsoft's .doc, while certainly ubiquitous, is not open and totally readable by any given document editor.
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