Gutierrez's comments came after a Silicon Valley programmer disclosed that he has developed an Office plug-in supporting OpenDocument, which is formally known as the Open Document Format for Office Applications.

The programmer, Gary Edwards of Redwood City, Calif., is active in promoting the use of OpenDocument. He said the plug-in is meant to enable fed-up users of Office to switch to alternatives such as Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice, IBM 's Workplace or the OpenOffice application suite. The plug-in "is like a key that unlocks them from Microsoft Office and lets them take the first step sideways" toward another product, he said.

But Gutierrez said that such technology could clear the way for Massachusetts agencies to continue using Office after the state's policy mandating the use of OpenDocument goes into effect in January. "We have a large installed base of Office suites, and the availability of a plug-in [supporting OpenDocument] would meet our policy requirements," he said.

Seeking assistance

In an interview with Computerworld last month, Gutierrez said tools that could convert files between Microsoft Corp.'s formats and OpenDocument would let the state avoid "months of question marks" over whether Office qualifies for continued use.