Open Formats for Office Documents
Over the last couple of years, ITD has been working with agency representatives to develop policies and standards that move our IT investments toward open standards and technologies, such as XML, that support open, interoperable systems. The Open Document Format (ODF) and Office Open XML are two of those open standards that pertain to "office" documents such as text, spreadsheets and presentations.
Starting with version 4.0 of the Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM v4.0) all agencies have been asked to begin to migrate away from proprietary, binary office document formats such as .doc, .xls and . ppt to open, XML-based office document formats. Microsoft Office 2003, currently deployed in the majority of agencies, will support both the ODF and Open XML formats through the use of converter software.
User Guidance 
file size 1MB
This document provides an overview and guidance to agency end users for the implementation of the Open Format standards for Office Documents.
SUN Enterprise License Agreement for converter software 
This enterprise license with the Commonwealth supersedes the click-through agreement that comes with the converter software installation package.
Open Formats Converters - ODF/Open XML Technical Guidance 
This document provides guidance to agency IT administrators regarding the installation of the ODF and Open XML converter software. Please read this document first before accessing the converter software through the links below. This software can only be accessed by Commonwealth staff.
Sun StarOffice 8 ODF Converter