A year ago, Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration and Finance in Massachusetts, was one of the first government official in the US that publicly linked support to open document formats to a public policy purpose and to declare that it was imperative that public document be accessible to all now and in the future. "We cannot have our public documents locked up in some kind of proprietary format, perhaps unreadable in the future, or subject to a proprietary system license that restricts access" he said at the Massachusetts Software Council annual meeting.

What happened since then and what is the state of play less than a year before the ODF implementation date of January 2007? Why should public interest groups care about it? Join us for an informal discussion with representatives from consumer groups, public interest groups, industry associations, academics, libraries etc. Bring your lunch and more questions. We'll have coffee, sodas and hopefully some answers.

Invited include: Ed Mierzinski (USPIRG), Jeanine Kenney, (Consumers Union), Paul Hyland (CPSR), Jeff Kaplan (Open ePolicy Group, Berkman), Will Rodger (CCIA) Sam Hiser (Principal, Hiser + Adelstein), James Love (CPTech), David LeDuc (SIIA) and a representative from the library community....

More information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/blog.php?ID=1961
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/02cd6280-8ce9-11da-9daf-0000779e2340.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office
http://www.mass.gov/eoaf/open_formats_comments.html
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/Main/HomePage
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/epolicy/roadmap.pdf