Government's focus on open standards makes good business sense and will help to avoid dependency on commercial software vendors, says [South African] Department of Trade and Industry head of IT security Bob Jolliffe. “There is much more to service delivery than XML or ICTs, but it is nevertheless globally acknowledged that eGovernment has a significant role to play in making some of those services more accountable, more transparent, more efficient and more accessible,” he said in a discussion concerning the eDocumentation Workgroup workshop on XML in

This article by Bryan Rasmussen gives a quick overview of how to design an OpenOffice form as an end-user, and provides the syntax for making an OpenOffice XForm match a required XML output format. The article assumes that readers have at least a simple knowledge of XML, XPath, and XML Schema. To follow along or use the downloadable code, you should have OpenOffice version 2.4 or higher installed.

After months of beta testing, IBM (NYSE:IBM) released Lotus Symphony 1, its free productivity suite, earlier this month. Based on an older version of OpenOffice.org (1.1.4, while the suite is currently up to 2.4.1), Lotus Symphony has a slicker interface, uncluttered menus, and a number of user accessibility options that make it a more attractive option than Open Office. The Test Center has been trying out Symphony since the first beta came out last fall and has watched it become more stable and nimble.

The South African e-documentation workgroup is hosting a number of the world’s most influential XML and open standards activists at the “XML in Government Workshop” next week. One of the key figures behind the event - and indeed behind much of the XML and digital standards work in South Africa - is Bob Jolliffe.

Suncorp's CIO, Jeff Smith, says he would like the banking and insurance giant to use open source software for its 20,000 desktops, which currently run Windows XP. Open source software is set to play an increasingly important role at Australia's sixth largest bank, according to Smith, who said that Suncorp will look to use open source "wherever we can".

"Our real vision is that we're going to use open source wherever we can, unless there's some capability that warrants the premium to buy software," Smith told ZDNet.com.au.