The UK government's decision earlier this year to commit to an open standard for sharing documents in the public sector was one of the more obscure parts of its digital strategy, and uncontroversial in the eyes of many outsiders. Only this week, government departments started releasing plans for publishing documents according to the mandate.

Most people would see little to argue with in the choice of a standard called the Open Document Format (ODF). It is widely used and respected, and is supported by the most popular word processor and spreadsheet products in the world – Microsoft’s Word and Excel.

But Microsoft consistently opposed the policy, which the software giant saw as its last chance to overturn the UK government’s broader plans for open standards. As emails seen by Computer Weekly reveal, the decision became an issue in the supplier’s Seattle boardroom, and brought the lobbying powers of the software giant into full force in Whitehall.

There has been speculation about the role played by senior government minister David Willetts, then minister of state for universities and science in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), but who later left the post in David Cameron’s 2014 summer reshuffle.

An investigation by Computer Weekly has revealed that – according to well-placed sources – Microsoft turned to Willetts to help win its case, with the supplier’s global chief operating officer (COO) Kevin Turner getting involved. But neither BIS nor David Willetts himself is willing to discuss the role the minister played in Microsoft's attempts to influence this obscure but vitally important part of government IT policy.

Willetts was the government’s liaison point for Microsoft, as a major employer and investor in the UK economy. He also served as co-chair of the Information Economy Council, a body set up to enable dialogue between Whitehall and the IT industry over future policy.

As such, if Willetts had favoured Microsoft over the many rival companies who stood to gain from the open standards policy, that would represent a breach of duty towards those rival firms.

The battle over ODF But the real battle began in January 2014, with the publication of the government’s preferred format for documents – the first big test of the long-held commitment to open standards. Controversially – in the eyes of Microsoft, at least – the Cabinet Office excluded the default format used by Microsoft’s dominant Office suite, known as Office Open XML (OOXML). Microsoft had consistently argued that OOXML is more widely adopted than ODF – even if you don’t include its own products – and that the policy should allow for the use of either standard. However, almost every contribution to the consultation process – that did not come from Microsoft or one of its partners – strongly favoured ODF. At risk was the government’s multimillion-pound spending on Microsoft products, and on the Office suite in particular. While the Cabinet Office would deny it was targeting Microsoft, it had always said it wanted a greater choice of products and more competition for its IT spending. Annually, the UK public sector spends around £300m with Microsoft. Eventually, in July 2014, the document policy was ratified. ODF won, OOXML and Microsoft lost. But the events in between have been the subject of much speculation, over the extent to which Microsoft was willing to go, to influence the outcome of the policy in its favour.

Aggressive lobbying The supplier has history when it comes to the measures it is willing to take to persuade government to toe its line. According to Rohan Silva, a former digital advisor to prime minister David Cameron, Microsoft had aggressively tried to derail previous attempts to commit to open standards. Microsoft called saying that if we went ahead with the speech on open standards, open architecture and open source, they would cut spending in the constituencies of the MPs Rohan Silva While working for George Osborne when he was shadow chancellor, Silva helped to write a speech in 2007 that would promote open source and open standards as fundamental elements of the digital government the Conservatives wanted to build. “A day or two before we were going to give the speech, a couple of backbench MPs called the office. They said Microsoft had called them, saying that – if we went ahead with the speech on open standards, open architecture and open source – they would cut spending or maybe close altogether on research and development centres in the constituencies of the MPs they called up,” Silva said in a speech to the CDO Summit event in London, on Wednesday 29 October 2014. “I was pretty worried about this to be honest. I went to see George – he said if Microsoft has a problem with the speech they should call us directly, so I relayed that back to the MPs. We never got a call from Microsoft, so we went ahead with the speech.” Microsoft declined to comment on Silva’s claim.

Deeply unhelpful A few months later, on 6 June 2014, Willetts was copied in on an email sent to a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office. The email was sent by Microsoft’s global COO, Kevin Turner, based in the company's corporate HQ in Seattle. “I know that the Cabinet Office has consulted on the question of document format standards for use throughout government and we are anticipating a decision in favour of ODF to be published shortly,” wrote Turner. “We still advise against that, but irrespective of that decision, we are keen to avoid the kind of headlines we saw at the start of the consultation, which do so much damage with little positive effect on either government, business or, indeed, the consumer. "The sentiment these kinds of headlines promote are deeply unhelpful for our consumer and enterprise business and on themselves, appear to do little to benefit the business of government either.” It took a further six weeks before the Cabinet Office publicly confirmed its commitment to ODF. Microsoft told Computer Weekly at the time that it “believes it is unproven and unclear how UK citizens will benefit from the government’s decision”. Even then, the Government Digital Service (GDS) had concerns over the response to the decision, stating in its 2014/15 Business Plan: "There is the potential for litigation on open standards." So Microsoft lost. But how hard did it fight along the way?

Ministerial code Under the terms of the government’s ministerial code, all meetings between ministers and external companies must be published. On the BIS website, the most recent list of meetings only goes up to March 2014, at the time of writing. It shows one meeting between Willetts and Microsoft in February 2014, “To discuss technology and innovation” – a generic description used for most of the minister’s meetings with IT companies. Computer Weekly submitted a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to BIS, requesting details of all correspondence or meetings between Microsoft and Willetts during and after the period of the open document format consultation. BIS confirmed that the information existed, but denied the request, citing section 35(1)a of the FoI Act, which exempts the release of information used as part of ongoing policy discussions. Computer Weekly appealed against that decision, citing section 35(2) of the Act, which states that such information is no longer exempt, once a policy decision has been taken – and mentioning the commitments under the ministerial code. BIS denied that appeal, on the basis of section 43(2) of the Act, whereby “disclosure of this information would prejudice the government’s commercial position if disclosed at this time". "This would not be in the public interest,” said BIS. Computer Weekly contacted Willetts by email, requesting further information about his meetings with Microsoft, but the reply from his parliamentary office simply said: “David Willetts has seen your message but has nothing to add to what you have already been told by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. "He is sorry not to be able to help.”