Becta's response to the approval of Office Open XML

"During the standard approval process Becta wrote to the British Standards committee responsible for co-ordinating the UK’s response to the proposed Office Open XML standard asking that it considers carefully whether two different ISO standards was the best outcome that could be achieved in this important area. We were clear that the interests of non technical users (including most teachers and parents) would be best served by a single standard which accommodated the existing Open Document Format (ODF) specification, and any extensions necessary to provide the required compatibility with various legacy Microsoft formats."

http://news.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=35948&page=1657&catID=1632