From January 1, 2008, the Government of Denmark has made it mandatory for all local government bodies and associations of Danish regions to use open standards for software, according to an agreement between the Danish Government, the association of Danish regions and the local governments of Denmark. This decision has been taken by the Danish Government in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector and ensure seamless task flow easily between various systems and organisations.
According the the definition decided by the Government of Denmark, the openness of a standard implies that it must be fully documented and publicly available, besides being freely implementable without economic, political or legal constraints on its implementation and use, now or in the future.
As per the agreement, all authorities must be able to receive office documents in two open document standards namely ODF(Open Document Format) and OOXML (Open Office XML) which allows citizens to communicate with government using open standards.
