The Department of Veteran's Affairs (DVA) has chosen to upgrade its ageing Microsoft Office 97 software suite with Office 2003, shunning a tender that included OpenOffice from open source software specialist Single Point.

The DVA enquired about a possible open source alternative to its Office 97 suite late last year, according to Will Sheridan, chief executive of Single Point, who said the DVA was having trouble reading letters and other documents authored in newer version of Office.

"That is where their pain lies. because they are running into communications difficulties with outside agencies who are writing letters in Office 2003 that they can't open. We came back with a proposal on how we would implement OpenOffice, Firefox and a number of other desktop tools. They liked the cut of our jib and asked us to do a formal proposal and cost model -- to replace Microsoft Office 97," said Sheridan.

He said although Single Point's proposal was taken seriously, it was eventually turned down by the DVA. He said the DVA had not given a reason for rejecting the open source proposal.

The DVA was unavailable for comment.

Sheridan said one reason why the DVA may have chosen to continue using Microsoft Office is because of the organisation's reliance on macros that cannot easily be migrated to OpenOffice. He believes that the forthcoming versions of StarOffice and OpenOffice 2.0, which will have better compatibility with Microsoft Office documents and formats, will make life easier for the open source community.

"The mindset is very much that if it doesn't work with Microsoft's products then it is not a lot of use -- you can see why because the whole world runs on Microsoft. But after the release of StarOffice 8 and OpenOffice 2.0 the question will get altered slightly. As both those applications have moved to XML and an open standard file format, the question to ask is, when will Microsoft do the same?", said Sheridan.

Sheridan said there was a possibility the DVA only showed an interest in OpenOffice and open source products to pressure Microsoft into reducing its prices. This, he said, was not a bad thing.

"Microsoft doesn't try and sell anything anymore. Instead they call and ask how many products you need -- because the alternatives were practically non-existent, at least until very recently. We have no problem at all in doing a true analysis on an open source solution and then saying this is a very real alternative. Take it back to the bargaining table and tell Microsoft, look, you need to get real with your pricing. I was thinking about calling the product: Keep the Bastards Honest," said Sheridan.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment.