News

Document Freedom Day delivers messages of interoperability around the world

on: 2014-03-25

Over the following 24 hours Open Standards will be celebrated to the ends of the earth. The Document Freedom Day campaign for interoperability is being enacted from Tokyo to Rio, and Birmingham to Taipei. 41 Events are taking place in 18 countries so far.

Open Standards provide the means for apps and computers to communicate together using common formats that everyone can use. This year two Document Freedom Day events have been organised by Government bodies: the Brazilian Federal Government CISL Committee, and the Nepalese Department of Information Technology. Events in the European Parliament are today exploring Open Standards used for encryption, while the OpenStreetMap Foundation on Saturday received the Document Freedom Day UK award in Birmingham.

"Spying revelations of the last year have proven the value of Open Standards for security as well for documents" says Sam Tuke, Campaign Manager. "Encrypted messages and network connections using Open Standards provide world-class privacy, used by Edward Snowden and the NSA alike."

Supporting organisations have marked the occasion in their own style, with a series of articles on SVG by Libre Graphics Magazine, a new whitepaper by The Document Foundation later this week, and a standards infographic by PHPList.

"This year, teams are using a broad range of multilingual educational resources to introduce Open Standards to the public" says Erik Albers, Community Manager. "Thousands of Cartoons, leaflets and posters have already been dispatched, and online editions have been printed in Turkey and Japan. New groups can still participate by locally distributing materials and registering their event."

Document Freedom Day 2014 is facilitated by the Free Software Foundation Europe, and made possible by support from Google, Commons Machinery, and Freiheit Technologies. A report of all events will be published in April, collecting highlights and media from participating groups.