Policy paper

DCLG open document implementation plan

Updated 21 July 2015

Purpose of plan

The purpose of the plan is provide a high-level overview of the department’s approach to the mandate to use open standards in the viewing and sharing of documents.

Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will be progressively (see overview below) moving to the use of open formats that will ensure that citizens and people working in government can use the applications that best meet their needs when they are viewing or working on documents together.

Freely available software provides access to existing .docx and .xlsx formats however, DCLG share the government’s commitment to opening up government to providing a level playing field for open source systems and providing the citizen with free access to government information.

Overview

The DCLG’s open document implementation plan is intended to continue DCLG’s work as a digital enterprise built around industry standard ICT and high quality external user focussed digital services that are supported by robust internal digital operations. It is based on supporting our four corporate technology and digital strategic themes:

• improving our strategic fit: focussing on policy issues – devised and developed in line with government strategic aims and priorities
• delivering a better department: focussing on supporting our people - who implement and enable the delivery of our policies and priorities
• delivering better technology: focussing on business requirements - providing the tools and platforms to enable the business to deliver
• enabling digital transformation: focussing on transforming our processes - how we work and use digital tools, information and networks to deliver our policies and priorities

The plan has been divided into the following 3 steps:

• phase 1: discovery, November 2014 to September 2015 - ensure all GOV.UK material is consistent with open document standards as at 1 November 2014 - undertake lessons learnt exercise to inform phase 2 and 3; establish high level user need

• phase 2: development, September 2015 to April 2016 - instigate DCLG wide audit of formats in use and develop roadmap for transition to open formats in accordance with open document guidance and user preferences; conduct piloting of ODF 1.2 compliant office productivity suite and conduct user consultation exercises as appropriate to inform phase 3

• phase 3: implementation
• phase 3a: pre-refresh implementation, May 2016 to April 2017 - mplement roadmap and conduct regular lessons learnt reviews with service users to inform roll-out and preparations for refresh
• phase 3b: new operational estate implementation post refresh, April 2017 onwards - implement revised roadmap and conduct regular lessons learned reviews with service users

Phase 1: discovery, November 2014 to March 2015

What’s in scope:

• sharing and coloration of documents - between citizens, businesses and officials within government departments
• viewing of documents - between people both inside and outside government
• to be able to view government documents on their device of choice
• covers publications, Word, spreadsheet and presentation files

What’s excluded?

• mini-applications (such as using office productivity tools to create business applications, calculators, financial models or smart forms) - files created by analysts are likely to fall outside the scope of the mandate depending on the business requirement
• tabular data that can be used by systems to deliver other services
• complex structured data (such as those in formats such as XML, JSON, RDF)
• web pages

Future standards

• the standards differ depending on whether viewing documents or sharing and collaborating on documents
• viewing documents
• HTML5
• electronic document file formats for long-term preservation PDF/A-1 ISO/IEC 19005- 1:2005 and PDF/A-2 ISO/IEC 19005-2:2011
• sharing and collaborating on documents
• Open Document Format - ODF 1.2
• for transition ODF 1.1 can be used
• DCLG will seek to adopt ODF 1.2 in accordance with GDS guidelines; for transition purposes DCLG will look to use ODF 1.1 within the operational limitations of the package

Who are covered by the standards?

These standards cover:

• members of the public
• business organisations
• government officials and departments
• public sector organisations
• voluntary sector organisations
• and many others

The standards cover anyone who interacts with the government and government services.

Impact re office productivity applications

• DCLG currently uses Microsoft Office 2010 for its office productivity software
• Microsoft Office 2010 can save documents using the Open Document Format v1.1. and save documents as PDF files using the PDF/A-1 ISO/IEC 19005-1:2005 standard
• Open Document format documents have the following file extensions:
• ODT - Open Document Text
• ODS - Open Document Spreadsheet
• ODP - Open Document Presentation
• Office 2010 supports ODF 1.1 format standard whilst Office 2013 supports ODF1.2 standard
• DCLG will seek to adopt ODF 1.2 in accordance with guidelines - for transition purposes, DCLG will look to use ODF 1.1 within the operational limitations of the package

Publishing on GOV.UK: operational status

Publications

These will be produced either using a Word processed text document template and then saved as a PDF, or in the case of Command papers, produced using a desk top publisher (InDesign) and saved as PDF. The option to save as a PDF/A accessible option is available in Office 2010 and InDesign and the Publications manager (and Digital Content team) have ensured that all publications published on GOV.UK from 1 November 2014 have been in PDF/A format.

Word documents

DCLG rarely publishes Word processed text documents (mainly forms) on GOV.UK – as PDF is the standard format for reading large documents - if we need to publish any Word processed text documents from 1 November 2014 then the Digital Content team will ensure that these are converted to ODT v1.1 format before publishing.

Excel spreadsheets

Most commonly published as “Live” data tables in support of statistical publications. Content producer (Stats division) should convert to ODS format before submitting to Digital Content team – however the statisticians have identified problems with certain spreadsheets – where drop-down filters fail to work when converted – more work needs to be done on finding a solution to this problem and DCLG will to commit to the spreadsheets where possible will be published from November being in an ODS format. Any required follow-up will be undertaken as a phase 2 and phase 3 priority action.

CSV files

These are machine readable files unaffected by the GDS proposals and will therefore continue to be published in this format.

Phase 2: development, September 2015 to April 2016

Development issues to be addressed:

• the current productivity suite (Microsoft Office 2010) does not support ODF1.2, and some formatting and formulae can be lost if converting to ODF1.1
• documents created using a different format may not render in the same way when converted to Open Document Format
• documents created in non-Microsoft software may not render in the same way when opened and saved in Microsoft software
• may impact analyst’s working with spread-sheets and supporting documentation
• increases the size of documents significantly when saved as PDF
• not all applications support the use of ODF formatted documents (BMS using the Oracle E-Business suite for example)
• need to integrate use of ODF into business applications

Development of user focussed adoption principles

DCLG strategic priority	draft ODF adoption principles	our approach
Improving our strategic fit - focussing on policy issues - devised and developed in line with government strategic aims and priorities	Support “digital by default”	seek to avoid documents, support rapid adoption of web
Delivering better technology - focussing on business requirements – providing the tools and platforms to enable the business to deliver	Implement via phased stages; show business leadership	Allow for agile adoption on an incremental basis that has time to adapt to inevitable challenges; Illustrate business benefits and need to drive change
Delivering a better department - focussing on supporting our people – who implement and enable the delivery of our policies and priorities	Support people	Via digital champions and internal networks
Enabling digital transformation - focussing on transforming our processes - how we work and use digital tools, information and networks to deliver our policies and priorities	Engage with users and business needs; embed ODF by default	Listen, learn and then take the time to prepare; move to ODF by default as a key drivers for culture change

Phase 3: implementation, May 2016 to April 2017 and beyond

Implementing the standard

Implement roadmap and conduct regular lessons learnt reviews with service users to inform roll-out and preparations for technology refresh and beyond - this is to include the following:

• departmental templates have been updated to ensure that they are interoperable between applications that support Office and ODF
• the most appropriate solution has been implemented so as to allow users to manipulate documents so that they can work in ODF
• appropriate document labelling standards are in place
• regular and consistent guidance is co-produced with users so that they are an integral part of the end-to-end requirements shaping process
• all applications have been reviewed so that they integrate with the relevant office productivity tools
• regular user led reviews of all training packages for use of ODF on office productivity software

Background guidance

• viewing documents
• sharing or collaborating on documents
• Cabinet Office announcement