This is the full text of the essay I wrote for the O'Reilly Open Government book, in which I discuss what open file formats and other digital standards really mean for us, why they are often even more important than Free Software and why Government must lead the way when it comes to their adoption.

In a huge win for open standards, free and open source software and the public, the long-awaited UK government definition of open standards has come down firmly on the side of royalty-free, not FRAND. The UK government list seven principles as defining an open standard.

Portugal's parliament adopted a law last Wednesday requiring the country's public administrations to use open standards, including for their electronic documents. Portugal's government organisations will now be required to implement open standards in all digital documents that they publish, exchange, and archive.

The newly elected German government plans to support open standards and open source software. In its four-year coalition contract, the government led by chancellor Angela Merkel, writes it wants to orient its IT systems on open standards and include open source solutions.

the Dutch government has recently attracted Microsoft's anger by launching an actionplan to adopt open standards, and concretely OpenDocument Format by April 2008 in the national government. Open Standards will become mandatory and Free Software will be preferred. As the Minister of State, Frank Heemskerk, argued, this plan is not to exclude any company, but to stimulate information exchange, vendor independence and choice for various software products that implement open standards. he Ministry of Economical Affairs has published an English version of the plan on its site today.

With a mighty "yehhh," the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a motion to adopt open standards in its local government this past May. It allows governments to free themselves of pricy, proprietary software burdens while simultaneously opening up more areas of government for access by conventional citizens.

"The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), the leading organization advocating for openness and accessibility to government documents and information, today congratulated Japan for adopting a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards."

As companies and communities come together to raise awareness of Open Standards for the forth consecutive Document Freedom Day, the issue of freedom from restricted digital files is more relevant in the UK than ever. "Britain's relationship with Open Standards is rapidly changing for the better.

This week the Dutch government will discuss a proposal to switch as much as possible to open standards and open source software. The Microsoft director for the Netherlands, Theo Rinsema, responded that Microsoft is not objecting to open standards, but the proposal excludes too many not open standards, like PDF, MP3 and GSM, which are widely accepted standards.