This Friday the eDeplomacy team at the U.S. State Department will host another Tech@State conference, the 4th in a semi-regular conference series where they bring together technology and government folks in different cities around the world. Friday’s focus looks specifically at how open source tools can improve efficiencies within the international development sector.

The day will start off with a look at what the government is already doing with open source in a session presented by Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the United States, Macon Phillips, White House New Media Director, and Todd Park, CTO at Health and Human Services. This will be followed by sessions looking at the current state of the government’s technology and a discussion around why open source software shouldn’t be feared. There are some great breakout sessions planned for the afternoon on topics like mapping and geospatial applications, open data at the city and state level, and using technology to better respond to disasters. Eric will be on the mapping panel, where he’ll talk about our open source mapping tools on MapBox and specifically about TileMill, a full-featured map design studio powered by open source tools that we are about to release. The full tentative schedule is available here.

There will also be a Tech@State unconference on Saturday to continue conversations and dive deeper into the details around specific technologies.

For updates throughout the day, follow @ericg, Alex, and Will.