As of June 1, Russian civil administrative authorities have been accepting documents submitted by citizens in electronic form, specifically in the OpenDocument Format, or ODF, an international standard for documents, spreadsheets, charts, and presentations.
ODF was adopted as a Russian national standard for electronic document interface last December by government standard agency Rosstandart. The move came after President Dmitry Medvedev’s strategic decision to shift all of the country’s administrative document flow to open-source software. Currently, however, open source software has only a 1.5% penetration in Russia, according to estimates by local software firm PingWin.
Originally developed by Sun Microsystems in the beginning of 2000, ODF passed audit hurdles in 2006 and gained recognition as an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on November 30, 2006.
Source: CNews.ru
