"It is not altogether clear what Obama meant when he referred to ‘universally accessible formats’. “Actually, in a clear indication that Obama has a good future in politics, he didn’t actually name any specific proposals related to ODF. In fact, there’s no saying what, specifically, he meant,”

Senator Barack Obama and the Democractic National Convention Committee,

In his campaign speeches, Senator Obama often evokes images of citizen participation in the governmental process. He proclaims that his message of hope is built on the foundation of mutual respect, and the prospect of working together to return the government to the hands of the people.

Free/Open Source software is great for Public Administrations, but Free/Open data are even more important. Making public sector information really accessible, that is publishing online raw data in open formats and under open licenses, can both improve transparency in government and foster local economical and cultural activities.

The historic U.S. Presidential election has come to an end with Barack Obama emerging victorious against John McCain. Obama will become the forty-fourth President of the United States and the first African-American to be elected for the highest office.

Senator Kate Lundy hosted a pre-2020 Summit event in Canberra last week to generate ideas on how open source technology, open standards and open access to information might transform the way government departments and the business world operate.

Government, state and regional agencies, authorities and services may also publish in other formats, but they must always publish in one of these formats. The decree is retroactive, and by 2014 all documents published prior to this decree must have been converted and made available in one of the three formats.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project in the process of building a free, Web-accessible, user-editable map of the world. So far, most of its map data has come through user-contributed GPS traces, but OSM has recently undertaken the bulk import of government-collected data covering the entire United States.

Open source software in government was the topic on the Linux blogs this week, particularly President Obama's request that Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy prepare a paper on how the U.S. government can use open source technologies.

We have reported extensively about the Venezuelan government’s support of open formats in the area of information technology. But it was only recently that the National Center of IT (CNTI) made it mandatory for the public sector to use open formats (ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG).