You mention 'format', but it sounds like you're interested in changing the timezone.
If you want to change the default for all processes on the machine, modify the TZ entry in /etc/TIMEZONE and reboot.
For any individual process, you can change the environment for it and restart the process.
$ date
Mon Nov 27 10:51:54 PST 2006
$ TZ=UTC date
Mon Nov 27 18:52:01 UTC 2006
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Darren