Sweden Invalidates Its Own OOXML Vote

“We had a situation where an employee sent a communication via e-mail that was inconsistent with our corporate policy,” said Microsoft’s Tom Robertson. “That communication had no impact on the final vote.”

It seems that this Microsoft employee offered extended market subsidies and other help to cover the cost for the partner to join the standards committee and vote.  Microsoft has been “encouraging” their partners worldwide to support the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard.

SIS, which represents Sweden at the ISO, has since declared its own vote invalid.  Rumors are now floating that Columbia, Norway, Portugal, and Switzerland may have also had their votes comprimised.

The OOXML specification is competing against the ODF (Open Document Format) for adoption by the ISO.  ODF is far simpler, the spec is 600 pages to OOXML’s 6,000.  For Microsoft it is important to get their own spec passed, otherwise they may be faced with retooling their Office suite of products to a degree.

For the most part Microsoft seems to be simply trying to leverage it’s partners to get out the vote.  It will be interesting to watch the fallout from this latest revelation in Sweden, however.