As Microsoft's Office Open XML document format remains in ISO limbo, a trio of countries are pushing forward an adoption of the alternative Open Document Format (ODF) instead, according to an ODF advocacy group.

The OpenDocument Foundation was formed in 2005, with the mission "to provide a conduit for funding and support for individual contributors to participate in ODF development" at the standards body OASIS.

The senator promises to put government data online in universally accessible formats if elected.

Late last month the First International ODF Users Workshop was held in Berlin. The event was attended by officials representing 20 governments from around the world. South Africa was represented by Aslam Raffee, the chief information officer at the department of science and technology.

Lots of goodness has been happening with the Open Document Format. Well, not the format itself, that has been an ISO standard for some time and that kind of implies it gets a bit boring. Fileformats being boring is, much like in governments, a good thing. Boring means stable. And we need a stable Foundation. (bonus points to the people that got the reference ;) )

Okay, lets get one thing straight… Repeat after me: “The Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with the Open Document Format”!

The recent decision by the Open Document Foundation to substitute the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Format in place of the format it was set up to promote, the Open Document Format, has sparked a contentious debate over what shape the format should take.

"At the first international workshop of users of the Open Document Format (ODF) in Berlin to which the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic had invited about 150 users and political observers, Brazil and India, in addition to German cities such as Munich, emerged as leading proponents of open standards in the office area.