ELIZABETH II

Open Document Format Act 2021

2021 CHAPTER 17

An act to ensure the wide-spread adoption of open document formats, make provisions for encouraging the usage of portable document formats, to ensure the longevity of public documents, and for connected purposes
Bill ID LB024
Author(s) Sir Hywel ap Iorwerth OOBC , 1st Earl of Caernarfon
Amended by N/A
First reading 2021 May 14
Royal assent 2021 July 06
Commencement 2021 July 06
Affected legislation N/A

Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

Section 1 Definitions

  1. For the purposes of this Act, the term “open document formats” is used to refer to document formats that:—
    1. are defined, maintained, well documented by any standards organisation or group of people, and
    2. can be freely adopted, implemented, and extended
  2. For the purposes of this Act, the term “closed document formats” is used to refer to document formats that are not defined as open by subsection (1).
  3. For the purposes of this Act the term “public body” is used to refer to:—
    1. Governmental departments,
    2. non-governmental public bodies or institutions,
    3. the Civil Service,
    4. and any other institution working on behalf of these groups to conduct governmental business.
  4. For the purposes of this Act, the term “platform independence” is used to refer to a document format’s ability to be opened, read, and edited regardless of operating system,hardware configurations, and screen-size.

Section 2 Provisions

  1. Public bodies as defined by subsection 1.3 in this Act should work to ensure the wide-spread adoption of open document formats in favour of closed document formats.
  2. Public bodies should work to ensure the longevity and platform independence of documents produced in relation to business undertaken by these organisations. This includes, but it is not limited to:—
    1. storing documents in open document formats,
    2. encouraging the usage of portable document formats such as ISO 32000 in favour of other document formats such as ECMA-376. and
    3. favouring platform independent open document formats.
  3. Public bodies should work to ensure that all non-classified documents are easily available to the public in open document formats.
  4. Public bodies should work to ensure that documents are also available in a plain text format such as ASCII, XML, HTML, or similar.

Section 3 Commencement, Extent, and Short Title

  1. This Act applies to Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
  2. This Act may be cited as the Open Document Format Act 2021
  3. This Act comes into force upon royal assent.
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