Obama Administration To Require Government Agencies to Make Information Available in Open Formats

The Obama Administration's Open Government Directive was unveiled today. Concerning open formats the key provisions are:

“each agency shall take prompt steps to expand access to information by making it available online in open formats...…..To the extent practicable and subject to valid restrictions, agencies should publish information online in an open format that can be retrieved, downloaded, indexed, and searched by commonly used web search applications. An open format is one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information........”