Open Document Formats for a Sustainable Swedish e-Government Strategy : Policy and Practice in Swedish Municipalities

There is a strong movement in Europe to promote effective e-Government, with directives and proposals at European and national levels. There is in particular recognition of the need for all governmental organisations to support easy public access to electronic copies of public documents, both for discovery and for reuse. In this paper we consider the extent to which local government documents in Sweden are being preserved electronically. We find that the high level vision stands in stark contrast with reality, with availability of electronic copies of documents very variable, and accessibility poor. In particular, we find little evidence of policy at local government level to maintain electronic copies of documents, and little awareness of the importance of open standards in data curation. The study highlights a lack of strategy, leading to significant electronic data loss even after only ten years.