[Hildy]

What's the upside of changing systems?

[Redcloak]

The upside is that one needn't buy one particular (usually pricey) software title to read official government documents in MA. Nor would you need to do so to submit files to the Commonwealth.

If they published something as a .doc file, then you would need Microsoft Word to reliably open and edit the document. Other programs might be able to do so, however, the results may be less that optimal. (Fonts screwed up, spacings wrong, fields misapplied or lost, etc.)

With open file formats, a number of programs can open and edit the same file. You get to choose which one you want to use instead of having some government bureaucrat decide for you. And what one person composes on one program looks just the same to someone else using a different program. Neither is forced to buy one and only one title to do business with the MA government.