>>> On 2/6/2008 at 6:52 AM, in message <f0e11c480802060452w610f72adr5601abbb61cce2c at mail.gmail.com>, "Brian D. Ropers-Huilman" <brian at ropers-huilman.net> wrote: > On Feb 6, 2008 12:26 AM, Tony Yarusso <tonyyarusso at gmail.com> wrote: >> As noted on my blog, I attended my caucus tonight, and decided to present a >> resolution for mandating the use of ISO-approved open standards for all new >> government documents and all being newly converted to electronic form, >> I was wondering if anyone else had similar resolutions brought up in their >> precinct, and if so, what was the result? The only concern raised against >> mine was wondering what the potential cost would be, although I think we >> have a solid argument there in that it would cost essentially nothing to >> implement open formats in a forward-only manner, and the real cost only >> comes in with retroactively converting existing documents ... > Having said that, however, we need to be careful when we talk about > costs. There certainly will be a cost involved in such a conversion, > not in the cost of the format or of the software to produce documents > in that format, but in terms of training. Like it or not, there are > differences in the applications that support open formats and those > that don't and those differences will have to be trained before users > are fully accepting of the new applications and their new formats. Keep in mind, however, that though some might not need training for new versions of Microsoft Office, many do. And that training costs are not limited to initial product roll out. There are many factors to be considered: - Initial and ongoing end user training - Upgrades and patching - Buying, managing, and tracking licenses - Researching, interpreting, and compensating for changing licensing terms - Negotiating pricing at time of purchase All of these take time and should be weighed on the cost side, and I think there may be more. There are some of the same costs for OpenOffice or similar products, but the purchasing and licensing issues go out the window. It gets even more expensive if you want to convert documents, for whatever reason. Unannounced, undercover document conversion projects occur with almost every new version of Microsoft Office. They show up in higher numbers of Microsoft Office related trouble tickets, if nowhere else.