The COIN Internet Research Network (COIN-IRN) at Central Queensland University and the Centre for Community Networking Research (CCNR) at Monash University are being sponsored by the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) to coordinate the development of a Civil Society statement to supplement materials developed by the Australian Government for the World Summit on the Information Society(WSIS).

As part of this they are holding a consultation meeting in Melbourne on October 17th which you need to RSVP to the CCNR organiser if you wish to attend.

This process is intended to produce a response to a challenge to guide and inform this process to produce a "clear statement of political will and a concrete plan of action for achieving the goals of the Information Society".

This seems, to me, to be an excellent opportunity to try and promote strategies to permit open and equal access to information and documents through open standards for document formats so that everyone can gain access regardless of what they choose to use to access it, and to guarantee the ability for future generations to also be able to access it.

This is the reason that I support Open Source Victoria’s push for governments to use open document formats.