Adoption of open standards

The request was successful.

Dear Bristol City Council,

This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

In July 2014, the Cabinet Office announced the adoption of open standards for document viewing and collaboration in central government. See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/open-... for details.

The standards adopted are:

- PDF/A or HTML for viewing government documents;
- Open Document Format (ODF) for sharing or collaborating on government documents

What plans does Bristol City Council have to emulate central government's move and when will similar open standards be adopted by the council for communicating and collaborating with citizens.

Yours faithfully,

Steve Woods

Freedom of Information, Bristol City Council

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[1]Bristol 2015 - European Green Capital – an initiative of the European
Commission

References

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1. http://www.bristol2015.co.uk/

Freedom of Information, Bristol City Council

Dear requester

We write in response to your requests for information received here on
27/02/2015. For your reference your requests for information are in bold
below and our responses follow.

This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

In July 2014, the Cabinet Office announced the adoption of open standards
for document viewing and collaboration in central government. See
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/open-...
for details.

The standards adopted are:

- PDF/A or HTML for viewing government documents;
- Open Document Format (ODF) for sharing or collaborating on government
documents

What plans does Bristol City Council have to emulate central government's
move and when will similar open standards be adopted by the council for
communicating and collaborating with citizens.

Bristol City Council has been a long-term supporter of open standards
wherever possible. We have frequently voluntarily adopted national
government policy on open standards and open source, recognising the
benefits of this approach.

We adopted StarOffice in 2005 and moved to the Open Document Format as our
standard for office productivity files at the point it was incorporated in
the StarOffice/OpenOffice.org products. We had to move to Microsoft Office
in 2010 due to the lack of standards support in the local government
applications market, partly due to the fact that national government
policy was not mandated at local level and therefore did not have the
desired effects on the document standards context. However we retained the
ability to create, open and collaborate on ODF by implementing LibreOffice
alongside Microsoft Office on all council PCs. Therefore we are already
capable of using ODF to collaborate on government documents.

In terms of publishing government documents to citizens, we have
historically used PDF, but are now attempting to replace all information,
advice and guidance, and application forms with fully digital services.
Over time this will replace old PDF documents with HTML. If there are
documents that meet a user need to download and read offline, we can
produce PDF/A format from the open source PDF Creator software that is
also available on every council PC.

On behalf of
Freedom of Information Team

This response should answer your request in full, however if you are not
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exemptions that may have been applied, you can do so by writing to the
Data Protection Officer at Bristol City Council Legal Services, City Hall,
College Green, Bristol, or [Bristol City Council request email]. Details of the complaints
procedure can be found at http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/complaints

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still not satisfied with the response you have received you have the right
to complain to the Information Commissioner, details of your right to
complain can be found at http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx

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[1]Bristol 2015 - European Green Capital – an initiative of the European
Commission

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References

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Dear Freedom of Information,

Thank you for such a prompt response in a mere 10 working days.

I trust you will endeavour to answer my future requests with such alacrity without having to be prompted - as seems to be all too common - after the expiry of the 20 working days limit for replies.

Yours sincerely,

Steve Woods