Washington, DC, March 11, 2010.  The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance) today applauded the Request for Proposals (RFP) released by the Government of Edmonton seeking submissions to provide "solution design and implementation of the next generation of the office, messaging, collaboration and document storage platforms."  The initiative is intended to include the implementation of "open document formats to provide inter-operability between alternate applications."

"Edmonton's RFP is yet another demonstration of the global open movement, where the vast majority of governments are demanding open formats for greater interoperability and choice," said ODF Alliance spokesman David LeDuc.  "Given Edmonton's goal to establish a 'feature-rich productivity environment' that implements 'open document formats to provide inter-operability between alternate applications,' ODF is the only open standards-based solution that can truly deliver on a choice of solutions and savings, while ensuring long-term accesses to data."

The RFP is one of five major announcements made by Chris Moore, Edmonton CIO, at the Open Data Workshop held on March 6th.  The RFP identifies the intention to "move away from an office productivity suite available through a Windows client installation, and move toward a cross-platform browser-based solution, with data and services accessible inside and outside the City's network."

"This is very consistent with the global trend we are seeing among other governments. Not only does it reflect the demand for open standards, increased interoperability and choice, but also the call for online collaboration and browser-based solutions that are proliferating around ODF," added LeDuc.  "Either intentionally or not, the Government of Edmonton has timed this perfectly; the deadline for proposals is March 29, the day before Document Freedom Day, a global grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Free Document Formats and Open Standards in general."

About the ODF Alliance:

The OpenDocument Format Alliance is an organization of governments, academic institutions, non-government organizations and industry dedicated to informing policy makers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of ODF.