The use of free and open source software by sixteen schools in the Swedish municipality of Sollefteå is proving its usefulness to the municipal administration and encouraging its moove to open source applications.

Cenatic, the Spanish government's Resource Centre on Open Source and Open Standards announced, on Monday 26 March 2012, that the Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura began the strategic overhaul of its Information Technologies (IT), aiming to save millions of Euros and increase its use of free and open source software.

Cenatic, the Spanish government's Resource Centre on Open Source and Open Standards announced, on Monday 26 March 2012, that the Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura began the strategic overhaul of its Information Technologies (IT), aiming to save millions of Euros and increase its use of free and open source software.

Lower costs of procurement and freedom from IT vendor lock-in are the two main benefits from using free and open source software, concludes a survey conducted among public administrations in Europe, published on 28 March 2012.

Public administrations in Iceland are increasing their use of free and open source software. The country's Government recently launched a one year migration project for all of its public institutions.

The Sǎo Joǎo Hospital in the Portuguese city of Porto will replace its existing proprietary suite of office tools with free and open source alternative OpenOffice, according to a recent article published in online newspaper Expresso. The hospital is the "first to challenge the abusive monopoly from the proprietary software vendor", the article reports.

Version 1.3 of Open e-PRIOR, the open-source eProcurement platform, has been published on Joinup.eu, a collaborative platform created by the European Commission.

The second edition of the National Congress of Interoperability and Security - CNIS 2012 was held at the National Mint (FNMT), Madrid, on 22 and 23 February 2012, gathering more than six hundred attendees.

On 24 February 2012, the Italian province of Savona unveiled its new website, rebuilt on the open source content management system Drupal. The province argues that using free and open source software helps reduce operating costs and at the same time gives the freedom to customise and share the province's applications.

Improving IT applications for the users is the reason most frequently given by German public administrations to move to open source and open standards, according to a migration guide that is about to be published by OSS Kompetenzzentrum, the government's resource centre on open source software.

The administration of the city of Munich has now replaced all of the macros that tied it to a proprietary office suite, the city reported on 23 February 2012.

Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President responsible for the Digital Agenda, wants public authorities to include IT standards in their procuring of software and IT solutions. She says this will tackle the problem of IT vendor lock-in "at its origin".

A first draft of a metadata standard to help describe and classify free and open-source software in a machine-readable way is to be published at the end of February 2012. The specification of the standard in question is being developed by a group of government specialists and software developers involved in electronic government services around the EU.

Public administrations procuring IT services and software must add to the budget plan the exit costs needed to move to alternative IT solutions after the end of the contract period. That is one of the recommendations by Open Forum Europe, a non-profit organisation advocating the use of open standards in ICT, in a report on procurement published on 13 February 2012.

The UK Cabinet Office is seeking advice on the definition of open standards in the context of Government Information Technologies, by posting the relative consultation documents online on 8 February 2012. The consultation follows the withdrawal, in November 2011, of an IT Procurement policy in effect since in January 2011.