Massachusetts government officials announced plans yesterday to phase out their install base of Microsoft Office in favor of suites such as OpenOffice and StarOffice which support the newly ratified OpenDocument format. Peter Quinn, CIO for the state of Massachusetts, said that the state will support the OASIS-developed standard in a statement on their website. OpenDocument is an XML-based file format that covers the feature required by text, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents.

The decision to adopt the OpenDocument standard came after "a series of discussions with industry representatives and experts about our future direction," according to Quinn's statement.

The migration is a huge undertaking for the state, and the various departments of the state are expected to develop phased migration plans with an implementation date of January 1, 2007.

As expected, a Microsoft spokesperson said "We support open formats too!", adding that the public sector should not force a single document format on its agencies, especially one that may be less functional than what they are already using.[co-published with friend site GeekCoffee]