Improving access to government information with open standards for document formats

An important element of transformational government is improving the access and use of government information. Effective use of government information requires government to move beyond traditional proprietary document formats because these formats limit access and use of information stored digitally. In this chapter, we show how document formats based on open standards and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) can revitalize citizens' access and use of government information. We also offer an improved definition of open standards to assist governments in selecting which document formats to adopt. A critical part of this new definition is an emphasis on multiple implementations of an open standard, which is also known as running code.