The UK Government has supported the adoption of open standards for government documents. The government has supported open standards and interoperability through its eGovernment Interoperability Framework (eGIF).
Still, the government has warned that there is no such thing as a document storage panacea. More than 1,300 people have signed the petition, which argued that the government should use open standards based formats to properly future proof the documents they produce. According to petition author John Imrie, currently, the government is storing electronic documentation in proprietary formats, like Microsoft’s .doc format. In order to allow future generations to access to these documents, it is imperative that they be in a fully documented standard.
