§ Mr. AllanTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what her Department's policy is in respect of the computer file formats used for the(a) distribution and (b) archiving of publicly available documents. [173359]
§ Alun MichaelDefra's main method for placing documents in the public domain is our online Publication Scheme, which can be found on the Defra website at http://defraweb/corporate/opengov/pubscheme/index.htm. A range of standard web file formats are used for these 287W documents; primarily Portable Document Format (.pdf), Hypertext Markup Language (.html) and Active Server Pages (.asp).
Documents that are created electronically but are distributed to the public via other methods are stored in their native file format. Typically this will be one of the Microsoft Office formats such as Word (.doc) Excel (.xls) or PowerPoint (.ppt).
These documents are placed on a registered file, in hard copy, to form part of our official public record, as mandated by The National Archive. Currently Defra does not have an accredited electronic archive, although plans are in development for a future implementation.