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.

As set forth in the Statement of purpose of its charter, the OASIS OpenDocument Metadata Subcommittee submits their OpenDocument Metadata Use Cases and Requirements document. The document has been approved by the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee this Monday, and is available in OpenDocument and PDF formats.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODF, ODS, RTF, CSV, etc.