The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), a broad cross-section of organizations, academia and industry dedicated to improving access to electronic government documents, issued the following statement regarding Microsoft and Novell's announcement regarding collaboration on document format compatibility: "We see yesterday's announcement as further acknowledgement from Microsoft that ODF is something customers are demanding," said Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance.

The International Digital Publishing Forum, the standards and trade association for digital publishing, announced today the release of a new technical standard to facilitate digital content creation, distribution and use by consumers. In addition to the Open eBook
Publication Structure (OEBPS), an XML standard for authoring digital books, the IDPF has now released a new standard for packaging a digital publication, including the contents of the publication, metadata, signatures, encryption, rights and other information into one standard

At the Internet Governance Forum summit this week in Athens, Greece, Sun Microsystems Inc, along with supporters including IP Justice and the Consumer Project on Technology, will urge governments to adopt procurement practices that recognize open technology standards as important, and forbid buying only proprietary technology. The inaugural IGF meeting, which kicked off yesterday, is being attended by about 1,500 members of international governments, civil society organizations, private companies, academics and media.

OpenDocument v1.1 has just been approved as an OASIS Committee Specification and is thus available for implementation.

The subcommittee of the OASIS OpenDocument Format TC focussing on accessibility aspects of OpenDocument recently published an Accessibility Evaluation of the OpenDocument v1.0 specification. In order to address the accessibility features identified by the accessibility study as quickly as possible, the OpenDocument TC prepared OpenDocument v1.1, which now has been approved an OASIS committee specification.

eGovernment News cites a recently published report, commissioned by the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, which strongly recommends that France should follow the example of Belgium and make Open Document Format (ODF) mandatory for all public bodies. The report, 'On equal terms', was prepared for the Prime Minister by the Member of Parliament for the Tarn region, Bernard Carayon. In it, Carayon calls for new legislation to make it compulsory for French government departments to use ODF for the creation and dissemination of documents.