Norway backflips on OOXML 'yes' vote

Norway's national standards body has lodged a formal protest over the country's vote on Office Open XML (OOXML) at the ISO.

The chairman of the Norway's standards committee said there were "serious irregularities" with the voting process and that the vote should be changed to oppose ISO certification of Open XML.

In the letter, sent on Monday to the ISO, Steve Pepper, chairman of the Norwegian mirror committee to the ISO, asked that Norway's vote be suspended pending the results of an investigation.

"I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest," wrote Pepper in a statement to the international standards body.

The statement continued: "You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80 percent of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes."

Pepper informed the ISO that the Norwegian Ministry of Trade has been called upon to investigate the voting procedure before concluding his statement by requesting that Norway's decision be suspended pending the results of the government's investigation.

Reports emerged last Friday detailing the irregularities, with Computerworld Norge claiming that representatives from Microsoft and Statoilhydro on the Standards Norge committee voted for approval of Open XML. Despite other members of the committee standing in opposition because their comments on the specification were not addressed. Yet the overall vote changed from changed from No to Yes.

Microsoft employee Stephen McGibbon posted an English translation of a statement from Standards Norge responding to the criticism of the process. The statement calls for "critically evaluate the Fast-Track procedure at the ISO," the accelerated process for standards submission and consideration.

"In the committee there is a clear majority that is opposed to making OOXML into a ISO/IEC standard. Standard Norge must however in its overall assessment also consider the result of the formal hearing, and thus there is a majority of yes votes. There was greater number of end-users of document standard formats among those in favor, than those who were opposed to the standard," the statement continued.