InformationWeek: New York State Looks At Open Formats For Documents

"A bill supporting open formats for the storage of New York state governmental documents has been filed by the state's Governmental Operations Committee chairwoman, making the Empire State the latest state to enter the ongoing debate over XML format standards."

"The issue pits Microsoft's XML-based Office formats against the OpenDocument Format supported by the Open Document Foundation. The battle was joined several months ago by Massachusetts when the state required ODF to be used for its documents over the vigorous protest of Microsoft. In recent months, additional states have begun to consider the issue."