The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has approved the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as an international standard.

ODF enables the retrieval of information and exchange of documents without regard to the application or platform in which the document was created, both now and in the future.

"Approval of the OpenDocument Format by ISO marks an important milestone in the effort to help governments solve the very real problem of finding a better way to preserve, access and control their documents now and in the future," said Marino Marcich, executive director of the ODF Alliance. "There's no doubt that this broad vote of support will serve as a springboard for adoption and use of ODF around the world."

The OpenDocument Format emerged from work done at the open source OpenOffice.org project. This work was later submitted to, and further developed at, OASIS, where it was accepted as an official OASIS standard in May 2005. The six-month approval ballot for its adoption as a standard by the International Standards Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission ended on May 1.

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