The French government policy on free software is now available in English. The translation was published earlier today by April, a French advocacy organisation. It is not an official translation. However, experts involved in the creation of the original French text have not found misinterpretations, the advocacy group commented. The group hopes other public administrations will use the guideline to their benefit.
AT4AM, software for authoring and management of amendments on parliamentary texts used by the European Parliament, is available as free and open source software. The web site hosting the software was unveiled yesterday by EP vice-president Rainer Wieland, a German member of the EPP group.
AT4AM for All, the official name of the open source version, is available under the EUPL, the European Union's public licence.
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In order to simplify the consumer protection procedures, the State Consumer Rights Protection Authority (Valstybinė vartotojų teisių apsaugos tarnyba – VVTAT, in Lithuanian) launched a project whose aim is to build an online consumer rights protection system.
The Swiss Parliament on Wednesday rejected a motion calling on the government to create vendor independent e-government services, Swiss newspapers report. With 14 votes against and 12 vote in favour, the Swiss Council of States (Ständerat) threw out a motion, submitted in 2011, requesting the government to create 'Non-discriminatory eGovernment solutions for Swiss farmers'.
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Public administrations in the United Kingdom are to prefer open source software over proprietary alternatives, in particular for operating systems, networking software, web servers, databases and programming languages. The choice for this type of ICT solution is part of the 'Government Service Design Manual', published on 14 March.
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To maximize economic welfare, governments should aim for a healthy mix of, on the one hand, ICT companies providing products and services based on open source, and on the other, firms selling products and services based on only proprietary software. However, finding the right balance and the best policy instruments is tricky, according to a case study published on Joinup today.
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In March 2013, the Ministry for Information Society awarded a contract to an IT consortium to provide project management consulting services for the software development, training, information provision and promotion of the national small and medium enterprises (SME) portal. The portal is expected to go live in September 2013.
The IFLA Committee on Standards invites papers to be presented at 79th IFLA General Conference and Assembly, Singapore, August 2013.
Theme : Future standards : infinite possibilities
The German Institute for Legal Questions on Free and Open Source Software considers the European Union's software licence EUPL to be one of the seven most important open source software licences. "It is anticipated that this license will be increasingly used by public administrations for licensing independent developments", the Ifross writes in a review, part of its Frequently Asked Questions, posted on its website in January.
Switching to free and open source software contributes to sustainability by making a more efficient use of computer hardware, allowing to use PCs for longer than when following proprietary software vendor's upgrade cycle, two very recent examples show.
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Adullact, the French association of civil administrations working on free and open source software, is revamping its services. It recently added new online applications, including Slow, for submitting government forms, and Web-Marché, an electronic procurement solution.
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On October 16 2012 the award “Deed of the Year 2012” was given by the Estonian Federation of the Blind. On February 28 2013 the Estonian Librarians Association’s award “Deed of the Year of Special Library” was received.
