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Denmark has [[https://github.com/skat|freed up code in the national Customs and Tax Administration]]. The decision to create an open repository for the tax authority was taken in 2015, and has been updated with tools and Free Software since. Denmark has [[https://github.com/skat|freed up code in the national Customs and Tax Administration]]. The decision to create an open repository for the tax authority was taken in 2015, and has been updated with tools and Free Software since. In 2018, however, the agency is transferring from SKAT ("TAX") into Skatteforvaltningen due to tax scandals.
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The country has introduced an [[https://github.com/vvk-ehk|interface called Valimised for its electoral service that is based on Free Software]]; the interface includes information for the European elections. The country has introduced an [[https://github.com/vvk-ehk|interface called Valimised for its electoral service that is based on Free Software]]; the interface includes information for the European elections. The service was set up in 2005, when the country set out the foundations for its [[https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/2015-03/egov_in_estonia_-_january_2015_-_v_17_final.pdf|information security policy]], furthering its [[https://www.mkm.ee/sites/default/files/digitalideology_final.pdf|digital ideology]] for open platforms, decentralisation and interoperability.

Introduction

The modeling of Free Software in EU Policy has increased, as governments' repository networking has increased through their respective Gits. In 2018, 17 out of 28 nations' governments represent Free Software with EU Policy.

Many countries in Europe have laws and recommendations referring to the procurement of Free Software and Open Standards. The picture is certainly complex, and can be confusing at times. Many countries already use and/or build their public digital solutions based on Free Software.

On this wiki page, we attempt to provide an overview of the laws and policies that exist throughout Europe, together with some practical examples of existing digital solutions developed for public administrations as Free Software. If you are working for Free Software in your country, it is useful for you to know what your government says about the topic. Comparisons between different countries can also be instructive.

This is a work in progress. Please help us make this overview the best it can be!

European Union

In 2004 the European Interoperability Framework v.1 was published, where, for the first time on the pan-European level, Free Software and proprietary software were treated equally. The EC encouraged the use of Open Standards in e-government services to effectively implement software interoperability both on national and international levels.

The term “Open Standards” is not in use in the European Interoperability Strategy and the EIF v.2, published in 2010. Instead, the EC introduced the term “open specifications” and proposed that“when establishing European public services, public administrations should prefer open specifications, taking due account of the coverage of functional needs, maturity and market support”.

The EC actively promotes public procurement of Free Software: in 2008 and 2010 special guidelines for public administrations on how and why publicly acquire Free Software were published.

Among other important EU documents on Free Software and Open Standards, EU Digital Agenda explicitly states that public procurement of software and ICT should promote efficiency and reduce lock-in.

In the end of 2015, the European Commission started security audits of Free Software it is using under the 'EU-Free and Open Source Software Auditing' (EU-Fossa) project that was initiated by the European Parliament. The project should result in a systematic approach for the EU institutions to ensure that widely-used key Free Software components can be trusted. The project will also enable the EU institutions to contribute to the integrity and security of key Free Software. This includes to involve the Commission in fixing bugs in Free Software components, and that the European Commission regularly inspects widely-used Free Software.

The European Parliament's own-initiative report on "Towards the Digital Single Market Act" adopted in January 2016, which reflects the Parliament's non-binding position on the legislative and political changes proposed by the European Commission in the light of latter's "Digital Single Market Strategy", calls upon the Commission to increase the use of Free Software in public administrations and educational establishments. The report also highlights the security advantages of Free Software.

In the 2017 report, February, “e-democracy in the European Union: potential and challenges”, free software was referenced in its 33rd amendment:

“[The European Parliament] stresses that the development of e-administration should be a priority for Member States and the EU institutions and welcomes the Commission's ambitious and comprehensive e-government action plan, for which proper national implementation and coordination of available EU funding will be key, in synergy with the national digital agencies and authorities ... [The European Parliament] considers that more efforts should be made to encourage open data and the use of ICT tools based on open-source and free software, in both EU institutions and Member States”.

Aside from reports prepared by Europe’s parliament, the European Commission has carried out licensing measures of Free Software. In 2016, the governing body ruled that the EU Public License could be applied for distribution of software by the System for Reporting the Incidents in Offshore and Gas Operations.

European Union's Member States

An overview of policies in the member states can be found in the Open Source Observatory Annual Report 2016.

Austria

National policy on public procurement of Free Software could not be found. Though in 2010 Austria announced its plan to create interoperable e-government systems based on Open Standards and Free Software.

In January 2017, the Austrian government published its Digital Roadmap, the result of a multi-stakeholder public consultation which lasted over two years. The road-map describes the current digitalisation status of the public sector and sets goals for the years to come, including the promotion of Free Software in public administrations. A position paper has been forecasted within the roadmap as a measure for outlining Austria's strategy for supporting Free Software. Moreover, the roadmap outlines the importance of the "authorities' enforcement of Open Source" (pg. 40) as a measure for improving Politics and Management.

Austria has installed and allowed the usage of Free Software within its National Library. This surge in the use of Free Software has synchronised with Webarchiv Österreich, an open source website archive platform for the Internet in Austria that was instantiated into law in 2009, run by the National Library.

Belgium

Since 2004, federally commissioned software must be delivered with the source code. Federal authorities are recommended to acquire Free Software, but final decisions should be based on total costs.

Starting 2008, Belgian federal government services are obliged to use the Open Document Format (ODF) when exchanging documents.

Belgium's Federal Public Service's (FPS) Policy and Support delivers on Digital Transformation policies, including those related to the ODF standardisation, freeing up public code as a resource in the process. The institution was set up in 2017.

Since 2015, an open government platform, Open Police, was adopted for the national police force. This is a decision that has been taken at the police level across the country, with 126 police platforms across the country reusing the software.

Bulgaria

In 2008 the Bulgarian government announced that it will consider Free Software while reviewing its national IT strategy.

Since 2015, Free Software is the preferred development form for eGovernment projects and listed as a requirement in the 'Preliminary criteria for the eligibility of eGovernment projects'. The policy is said to be backed up with the relevant legislation in future. A few governmental projects are already published as Free Software.

Since May 2016, a repository for software has been freed up and developed by and for the government. The introduction of the bill for open government is an amendment of the eGovernment act, adopted in 2007, by the establishment of a new agency: an eGovernment agency with the responsibility to manage the source code repository. The source code repository hosts software solutions developed by and for public administrations. According to the amendment, whenever public administrations are writing new software, and whenever they are upgrading existing software or systems, code ought to meet Free Software criteria.

Since July 2016 the Electronic Governance Act requires all software written for the government to be Free Software and to be developed as such in a public repository:

Art. 58a. Upon preparation of technical and functional assignments for public procurement to develop, upgrade or implementation of information systems and e-services, administrative authorities must include the following requirements: 1. when the subject of the contract includes the development of computer programs:

a) computer programs must meet the criteria for open source software;

b) all copyright and related rights on the relevant computer programs, their source code, the design of interfaces and databases which are subject to the order should arise for the principal in full, without limitations in the use, modification and distribution;

c) development should be done in the repository maintained by the Agency in accordance with Art. 7c pt. 18;

Despite the promising framework that the Art. 58a creates, April made some suggestions for improvement. In brief, April notes that a reference to free software and its definition would have been more ambitious, an explicit reference to the criteria of the "Open Source Initiative" might have been more appropriate and a broader provision, built around a priority to internal development and to sharing and reuse amongst public administrations, would have been possibly more useful.

Croatia

In 2006, the Croatian government adopted the "Open Source Software Policy" and issued guidelines for developing and using open source software in the government institutions. The policy encourages to prioritise Free Software in public institutions, to support open standards for protocols and file formats, to support the use of Free Software and open standards outside of its institutions, and to the use of Free Software solutions in educational institutions. However, the Croatian government was not so eager to implement the strategy in practice since its adoption, and by 2010 there was no significant presence of Free Software in Croatian public sector.

In May 2015, Croatian political party Sustainable Development of Croatia (ORaH) published a new policy that encourages the government to pursue Free Software solutions, addresses the dangers of vendor lock-in, and insists on open document standards.

By 2015, the Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection has become one of the country’s major users of Free Software solutions. The software is making possible two geospatial service platforms on biodiversity and environmental protection built for the State Institute for Nature Protection. The biodiversity portal is publicly accessible and can be reused in other systems. The other portal is meant for internal use by the Croatian government. The GIS system provides access to all institutions, helping them to maintain and update their data and making it easy to share and exchange information.

Cyprus

There appear to be no Free Software policies. However, the government has been opening up Cyprus’ data portal, recently taking part in the EU Datathon, part of the EU open data policy.

Czech Republic

Free Software policies could not be found.

The Czech Republic's Environmental Information Agency, is relying on a broad variety of Free Software solutions, including the relational database management system Postgres and its spatial databases extension PostGIS for management of its spatial data. It combines this with Mapserver and Geoserver, for building geospatial web applications. These services are built on open standards.

Denmark

In 2003 the Danish government adopted a Software Strategy emphasizing value for money, competition, freedom of choice, and interoperability. The policy expresses no preference for Free Software.

In 2007-2008 Danish government ran a pilot program , where government institutions were required to carry Open Document Format and Microsoft’s Office Open XML format on all computers. They were obliged to accept ODF created by the public, businesses, and other governmental units. Since 2011, ODF must be used by all state authorities.

In 2014, Aarhus decided on long-term IT strategy that requires the use of open IT standards for all of its future IT projects.

(Free Software procurement policy could not be found).

Denmark has freed up code in the national Customs and Tax Administration. The decision to create an open repository for the tax authority was taken in 2015, and has been updated with tools and Free Software since. In 2018, however, the agency is transferring from SKAT ("TAX") into Skatteforvaltningen due to tax scandals.

Estonia

Estonia is creating e-government services mainly by using Free Software: including the systems for health care, police, business portals, document exchange and document management, the software for e-Justice, Estonian Electronic Identity Software, a citizen portal, an open data portal and software for e-Procurement and e-Invoicing. The country also by default makes all of its software solutions available using the European Public Licence (EUPL).

The country has introduced an interface called Valimised for its electoral service that is based on Free Software; the interface includes information for the European elections. The service was set up in 2005, when the country set out the foundations for its information security policy, furthering its digital ideology for open platforms, decentralisation and interoperability.

Finland

Finnish government has recommended government agencies to consider Free Software since 2003.

In 2009 JUHTA, the public administration of information, has released the recommendation on the use of Free Software in public administrations. This policy document is intended to guide public institutions in the procurement of Free Software. Nevertheless, until now Open Standards and Free Software are not yet among the top priorities of the Finnish national IT policy.

In 2015, the city administration of Helsinki adopted IT strategy that emphasises a preference for Free Software, especially when developing or commissioning the development of software solutions.

Finland, moreover since 2015, has licensed the freedom of software across government. This includes for the population register centre, for the National Agency of Education, the National Land Survey of Finland, the National Library of Finland and the National Resources Institute of Finland.

France

The French government was among the first in Europe to consider setting up a national Free Software policy. The first proposals are dated 1999. Since then, several ministries, including Ministries of Defence, Culture, Economy, moved to Free Software operating systems.

In 2007, a guide of using Free Software in public administrations was published. Open Standards are used in e-government systems at the national, regional and local level.

Also, France has a public procurement law which includes the definition of Open Standards but does not provide them with mandatory or preferable status.

On September 19 2012, the newly appointed French government published a circular on Free Software in public administration. The document aims at giving guidelines and recommendations to public bodies related to their use of Free Software, it . It highlights the advantages of Free Software in term of competition, technological sovereignty and cost control. It also stresses the importance of sharing knowledge and skills in the digital society. The document promotes public contribution to Free Software project and regular contact with Free Software communities. The policy created several working groups -on desktop applications, data bases, server OS and virtualisation systems- and a "kernel team" to favour interoperability, promote good practices and manage public contribution to Free Software projects.

On June 25 2013, a law concerning the “Policy and planning for the rebuilding of the school of the Republic ” was voted by the French Parliament. Its article 10 concerning e-learning states that procurement for e-learning services has to “consider Free Software and open format offers, if any”.

On July 9 2013 the prioritisation of Free Software was voted by the French parliament for the first time. It concerns learning resources used by French Higher Education public service. Article L. 123-4-1 states that

  • "The Public Service for Higher Education provides digital services and educational resources to its users." "Free software is used on a priority basis."

In the early 2016, the French National Assembly approved a first draft law for a Digital Republic, which encourages (rather than prioritising) the use of Free Software by the country's public administrations. The draft Digital Law does consider source code of software developed by or for public administrations to be public information, which should be made available on request.

In 2016, Paris’ administrative court (“tribunal administratif de Paris”) concluded that the software source code written by and for public authorities can be considered as an administrative document and can be freely accessed. As a result of the case, France has officially opened the source code of the fiscal calculator used by the French fiscal administration to calculate the income taxes of individuals in France.

Later in the same year, the aforementioned "Digital Republic" Law came into force. Under the law, source code considered as administrative document and released electronically must be made available in an open standard format that can be easily reused and processed. Nevertheless, April expresses its concerns: first, it considers the newly-added restriction for the access to the administrative documents, based on threats for the security of the government disproportionate; second, the law does not establish the use of Free Software in public administrations, but only "encourages" certain government departments to consider Free Software and Open Standards when developing, purchasing and using software.

France integrates Free Software into policy-making activity in both the Ministry for Ecological Transition in Solidarity and Cohesion of Territories (since June 2018), and the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (since May 2018).

Germany

The German government actively recommends and promotes usage and procurement of Free Software by public administrations. As an example, in 2007 the Foreign office moved to the ODF.

Under Germany's Standards and Architectures for eGovernment Applications 4.0 (SAGA 4.0, 2008), ODF recommended for editable text documents. Since 2007, all communications with the federal courts may be transmitted in the ODF format.

Germany has made a point of bringing public services for knowledge and information onto Free Software repositories. The Iobid service, the Common Library Network (GBV) and the IsyFact information system publish and maintain software in respective repositories.

Greece

In 2011 the Greek parliament adopted an e-governance law (Law 3979/2011) that obligates public administrations to only develop software of which the code is open and can be modified and distributed freely. However, since the adoption of that law, the use of Free Software in public sector is significantly low.

In 2015, the Ministry of Economy, Infrastructure, Marine and Tourism signed a four-year cooperation agreement with the Greek free and open source software society (Gfoss) to "support the creation, promotion and reuse of open data, content and software in the digital economy". Gfoss, representing 29 universities and research centres in Greece, will help the Economy Ministry to design, develop and implement policies on openness. The advocacy group will also be involved in studies, pilots and implementation projects.

Hungary

In May 2016, the Hungarian government published a decree that promotes the use of Free Software and Open Standards in public sector. The decree requires the creation of provisions to propagate software built on Open Standards and Free software in the public sector. The country's Ministry of Interior is assigned to be responsible to bring in the necessary change:

* to start a central licence registry for software used by the public sector;

* to create a committee to help promote the use of open standards and Free Software, involving the country’s ICT council, the Academy of Sciences, and others;

* to report yearly on progress made on the use of Free Software and Open Standards.

To follow-up, in November 2016 the Hungarian government published a Decision, setting its goal to reduce the use of proprietary software in eGovernment by 60% till 2020. For that purpose, it engaged NHIT, the National Council for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and NISZ, the state-owned National Information and Communication Services provider, while the whole progress is monitored by the Prime Minister's Office. According to the above Decision, ICT procurement solutions must be platform-independent. In addition, NHIT and NISZ should create standard free PC desktop software configuration for all the government departments and a standard government document template repository.

Ireland

Free Software policies or major initiatives could not be found.

Ireland National Library is using Free Software in all parts of its digital library infrastructure. Linux systems are used for web services, for middleware systems and for managing digital assets.

Italy

The Italian government encourages the use of Free Software by the public administrations and calls for its extensive use where possible.

The 2004 Italian Directive for public procurement of software stated that in the acquisition of software, the public administration must consider Free Software and judge software according to transferability, interoperability, dependency on supplier, and the availability of the source code for inspection.

In 2007 Italy launched its own repository of Free software for public administrations (Ambiente di Sviluppo Cooperativo).

Italy has implemented a three-year digitalisation project from 2017 until 2019, called Team Digitale. This project has seen 19 software resources freed up and licensed on the project's repository within the first 18 months of its implementation.

Latvia

The Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia has regulated Free Software on a public repository.

Lithuania

No major Free Software policies were found, but, in 2016, Lithuanian police switched to LibreOffice by migrating 8000 workstations.

Luxembourg

Gecamed, a Free Software Electronic Health Record system developed in Luxembourg since 2007, was by 2015 used by more than 10 per cent of all general practitioners in the country.

Since mid-2015, an “Open data” portal (data.public.lu) has been online and publishes data in open formats. The reuse of this data is allowed.

Luxembourg has brought in measures to free up software for its national geoportal, as well.

Malta

In 2010 Malta Information Technology Agency has launched a series of policies with the aim to inform and guide government organizations in the procurement process of ICT solutions. Among them, the Open Source Software Policy, Open Source Software Directive, Open Standards policy, Open Standards Directive were published. It states there that government should actively consider acquisition of Free Software taking into account all direct and indirect costs when calculating the cost-effectiveness of Free Software. All prospective ICT investments, procured and / or developed internally within the public sector, shall adopt Open Standards. Open Standards-based solutions and applications should be preferred.

The Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) implemented the Malta Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) portal aiming at sharing environmental-related geospatial datasets, by using mostly Free Software.

Netherlands

Netherlands appear to have one of the most Free Software-oriented e-government and procurement policies in EU.

From December 2007 the Dutch parliament has been using exclusively Open Standards. The OSOSS ("open source as a part of the software strategy") Program was created to help stimulate the use of Open Standards by public administrations and provide information on Free Software.

In the Action plan published in 2007 the Dutch Cabinet intends to encourage the use of Free Software and Open Standards within the public and semi-public sectors. The key focus here is: “use Open Standards, or come up with a very good reason why this is not possible”. All institutions that still insist on the use of proprietary software must provide reasons for maintaining it until a later date.

In October 2016, the lower house of Dutch Parliament adopted a law proposal making mandatory the use of Open Standards for public administrations. The legislative proposal also instructs the government to actively promote the use of Free Software.

Positive examples of publicly funded software to be released as Free Software in Netherlands, are following:

* A web application for searching and showing geographically labelled information Geozet.

* Open government data portal that is enhanced integration of CKAN and Drupal.

* A OpenDocument Format testing website is in the process of development, whilst all the developed code of the project is being published under AGPL v. 3.

The Netherlands has launched civil society around Free Software tools and packages at a site called Pleio - since 2014.

Poland

The Polish government recommends the use of Open Standards to public agencies. According to the results of the survey carried out in 2010 90 percent of the Polish public administrations are using Free Software, though most of it is installed on servers.

In 2016, Poland’s eGovernment strategy recommends that publicly financed software should use an open architecture, and consider publication under a Free Software licence.

Poland has instigated Free Software with its Center for Information Technology that works with policy-makers in government, improving specifics within the country's digitalised infrastructure.

Portugal

Portugal's government recommends use of Free Software in the public administration, but these recommendations are not legally-binding.

Portugal's agency for the modernisation of administration (AMA) is government advocate for Free Software and has supported the country's data portal with public code.

Romania

In 2014, the Romanian government adopted its 2014-2020 Digital Agenda. Free Software and open standards are one of the so-called Strategic Lines of Development - “action points that need to be followed and executed in meet the desired outcomes for the Digital Agenda for Romania", outlined in the the National Strategy on Digital Agenda for Romania. This strategy promotes the use of Free Software and open standards, and provides open access to the applications purchased and implemented by public administrations.

Effects of this strategy's success have been varied: the government organised its IT Hub with 50 instances of Free Software between the years 2016 and 2018.

Romania has a repository for the government as a whole, where Free Software is logged from 2015 onwards.

Slovakia

Up until 2018, Free Software policies or major initiatives could not be found. Slovakia is making promising moves to adopt Free Software in legislation, having signed commitments for open source in an open government action plan for 2017-2019.

Slovenia

Since 2003 Free Software and proprietary software are given equal consideration in public procurement.

Spain

The Spanish authorities promote the Free Software and encourage its usage by public agencies. In 2010 the Spanish government adopted the National Interoperability Framework where it is forbidden for the public administrations to use exclusively non-open standards without offering an Open-Standard alternative, unless such alternatives do not exist.

The Spanish Royal Decree 4/2010 provides that the Spanish administration will speed-up technology reuse by making applications available under Free Software conditions. In such case the relevant software will be distributed under the EUPL (European Union Public Licence). One of the examples of such publicly available software is a web-based solution for archiving electronic files Archive that has been published by the Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations under EUPL.

In a regional level, Andalusia since 2005 and the Basque Country since 2012 require software developed with public funds to be made available as Free Software.

Spain has a Technology Transfer Centre (CTT) that works between public administrations, including on the European level, in order to improve the process and function of policy initiatives. It does this in support of Free Software. See "monitoriza".

Sweden

Swedish government recommends public institutions to judge Free Software and proprietary software on an even basis in the public procurement processes.

Contracting authorities in Sweden may require ICT standards as mandatory if these meet the requirement of an "Open Standard" as defined in the European Union’s Interoperability Framework (EIF v 1.0). Other technical specifications can only be used as ‘evaluation criteria’. Currently the list of "Open IT-Standards" includes 46 standards that meet the criteria listed in EIF v. 1.0. To make it to the list, IT standards must be developed openly and publicly. The standard must not constrain reuse of the standard, and intellectual property (patents) should be made freely available.

According to the study for the country’s Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation conducted in 2016, in general, Free Software is common in data centre environments, where it is used for web and application servers. Free Software is also more prevalent in central government organisations than in local administrations.

Examples include the National Heritage Board which switched its entire database environment to Postgresql and the Social Insurance Agency replaced a mix of proprietary server operating systems with Linux-based servers in 2014 and 2015.

Sweden has 10 democratic and governmental organisations instating tools and initiatives on the line of Free Software. These have used 8 different Free Software licenses and range from the Swedish Pensions Agency to library services to a state museum for the country's maritime history.

UK

In 2010 the UK government reviewed its Free Software strategy but remained pro-active user of Free Software. It states that the UK government will actively and fairly consider Free Software solutions alongside proprietary ones in making procurement decisions. Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfill minimum and essential capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements. However, Free Software is given a preference, where there is no significant overall cost difference between free and non-free software products.

The UK Government will require suppliers to provide evidence of consideration of Free Software solutions during procurement exercises – if this evidence is not provided, bidders are likely to be disqualified from the procurement. The UK Government will expect software developers to consider where necessary a suitable mix of Free Software and proprietary products to ensure that the best possible overall solution can be found.

The Government adopts Open Standards and uses these to communicate with the citizens and businesses that have adopted Free Software solutions.

In a procurement policy note 2011 the UK Cabinet recommends government departments wherever possible to deploy Open Standards in their procurement specifications.

In Government ICT Strategy, published on 30.03.2011, the UK Government impose compulsory Open Standards for the Government ICT infrastructure for interoperability and security reasons. It expressly states that government agencies should procure Free Software solutions, where appropriate - to help with this, a special toolkit for procurers on the use of Free Software will be published within next 6 months. Also, the UK Cabinet will promote more active participation of small and medium-size enterprises as well as voluntary and social sector, social enterprise organizations in bidding for government ICT contracts.

In 2016, Tech North - a tech hub of the Northern England (Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sunderland and the Tees Valley) published a report with recommendations to accelerate the digital growth and to reach the tech potential in the region. The Report suggests to encourage the use of Free Software in order "to enable collaborative innovation, opening software markets up to more local competition".

The UK has experienced a revolution in the state's Free Software over the years between 2011 and 2018, most of which is freed up by the Government Digital Service, HM Courts & Tribunals Service, HM Revenue & Customs, HM Land Registry, the Ministry of Justice, ONS Digital, Education and Skills Funding Agency Team, and the UK Home office: all providing between 100 and 200 instances respectively. The country has created Free Software in government to aid and carry out policies for open government, city infrastructure and digitalisation. On March 19th 2018, the UK may exit the EU as well as the European Economic Area.

European Economic Area and Non-EU Member States

Iceland

In 2007, Icelandic government published the "Policy on Free and Open-source Software" that is promoting the equal treatment of proprietary and Free Software in public procurement; encourages to prioritise Free Software and open standards to avoid vendor lock-in and to promote the reusability of software that is supposed to be the goal of publicly funded custom-build software.

Norway

In 2009, a regulation, "Forskrift om IT-standarder i offentlig forvaltning" (approximate translation: "Regulation of IT standards in the public sector") introduced requirements for HTML, PDF, ODF and certain media formats in published documents (FOR-2009-09-25-1222). In 2013, this regulation was revised (FOR-2013-04-05-959) to include the Microsoft-developed Office Open XML format, despite objections (for example, EFN/FriBit, Fri programvare i skolen) in the consultation process and controversy around OOXML's endorsement as an ISO standard.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, there was uncertainty in 2010 regarding the development and release of Free Software by public contractors. The trigger for this was the development and release of the software “OpenJustitia” by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. The federal council now wants to examine whether the publication of Free Software by the federal administration can be allowed explicitly.

Geneva eVoting system is published as Free Software.

Other

Argentina

Argentina share a Franco-Argentinian international centre for information systems with France. The institute's repository has been established to develop Free Software for inputting data and information within databases.

Australia

Australia have instituted the development of policy for biodiversity and conservation with the augmentation of Free Software - for instance, in the databasing of species populations et cetera. This is one example of 21 national government organisations that have licensed Free Software in the year 2018. The list also includes dta.gov.au, a site for the Australian Government's Digital Transformation Agency.

Bolivia

In 2002, the Agency for the Development of the Information Society in Bolivia (ADSIB) was created by Supreme Decree 26553. In 2015, ADSIB enabled groundbreaking tools for presenting HTML using Free Software - called reveal.js

Brazil

The most well-known governmental programme that integrates Free Software with policy in Brazil is Interlegis. Interlegis' mission is to digitalise the rule of law in Municipal, State and Federal levels. Up until 2018, the programme has licensed 109 instances of Free Software with the following: MIT, AGPL-3.0, Apache-2.0, GPL-3.0, ISC, GPL-2.0, BSD-2-Clause, MPL-2.0, LGPL-3.0.

Canada

Canada is sharing several software solutions under Free Software licenses:

Furthermore, here the response by the Treasury Board of Canada to public feedback on missing Free Software considerations in last Open Government Plan.

Ethiopia

As part of the country's digitalisation strategy, the Ethiopian government has planned and carried out repositories that are concerned with developing Ethiopian related apps, chatbots, APIs, AI etc,

Guatemala

Guatemala's Ministry for Public Finance has established the use of Free Software on its repository.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is known in the community for its policies surrounding its data portal, served by Government for Cantonese citizens. The portal is Free Software for CKAN.

India

One instance of Free Software policy in India takes place in the state of Kerala. Kerala's government policy for Media Literacy is orchestrated with Free Software as a directive. That is, the state government established the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) in 2001 - it's repository for Free Software is on Github.

Japan

Japan's Information Access Division, Geospatial Information Authority is likewise a government repository for Free Software, intending to allow citizens' detailed access to the country's Geography as a policy intiative.

Kosovo

All licenses and certificates introduced by Government ministries and agencies are monitored and valued by civil society through a Government-made Free Software: an OPI Platform called Map-Ashi.

Mauritius

Mauritius has NOSECC, the National Open Source Excellence and Competence Centre, established in Government in 2014 by the Ministry of Technology, Communication and Innovation.

Mexico

Mexico manages resources for government policy within its Open Data project that is updated on the Government's Mexico Open repository.

FYR Macedonia

In 2010, the Ministry for information society, together with several NGOs, businesses and universities, initiated and led the project of the National policy for Free Software (in Macedonian). The policy promoted inter alia open standards, and to publish every state funded project in education and research as Free Software. The policy also promoted the priority given to Free Software in public procurement, and the incentive to familiarise government officials with Free Software and to promote general digital skills independent from a particular vendor.

Unfortunately, since completing a draft of the policy in 2011, the project has been indefinitely postponed.

New Zealand

New Zealand activated a government repository for Free Software initiatives in 2015.

Paraguay

Paraguay has a National Secretariat of Information and Communication Technologies (SENATICS) that upgrades Free Software alongside government activity.

Philippines

The Republic of the Phillipines has a government repository, which includes a Government Portal project licensed with GPL-3.0.

Republic of Korea

In the South Korean Government, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport facilitates policy with Free Software and vice versa. Up until 2018, the Government Ministry has created 3 instances of licensed software.

Russia

In October 2016, an attempt was made by lower chamber of the Russian Federation's Duma by creating a draft bill that gives precedence to Free Software in public procurement. The draft bill gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer Free Software for public tenders, and codifies the definition of Free Software according to 4 freedoms it grants its users. However later the legislation was changed to give preference to "russian" software and not Free Software.

Singapore

Singapore's Government Digital Services instigate Free Software as part of their objectives to transform the delivery of Government policy for end-users. Up until 2018, the organisation has licensed 65 instances of Free Software.

South Africa

The South African Government's Economic Development Department has produced Free Software affiliated with its tasks for coordinating the country's new growth path.

US

In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) conducted a study based on interviews with Free Software experts, suppliers, and potential users, including government contractors and government employees. The study concluded that many interviewees stressed that contracts should require that software developed with government funding be maximally shared, developed collaboratively, and provide full data rights to the government; and emphasised that the government should release such software as Free Software by default.

In March 2016, the US Government published a draft of Source Code Policy Archive (pdf) for the public to comment upon. The policy requires every public agency to publish their custom-build software as Free Software for other public agencies as well as for the general public to use, study, share and improve the software. In August 2016, Federal Government released it as the Federal Source Code Policy. The new policy requires for each of the next 3 years, at least 20 percent of custom-developed Federal source code to be released as Free Software. The Federal Source Code Policy was issued in August 2016, and in November 2016 US government launched code.gov, a principal platform hosting federal government’s custom-developed software released as Free Software.

In 2016, the interdisciplinary research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the MIT Media Lab, changed their internal procedure of software release to eliminate the unnecessary administrative hurdle of approving the release of software under Free Software license by an internal committee: since the change of policy, any Free Software request is viewed as the default and is being automatically approved.

Venezuala

Venezuala has SUSCERTE, the Superintendence of Electronic Certification Services, established in 2001 by the Government of Venezuela. Since 2014, this inquisition has adopted Free Software in their undertakings.

Activities/EU_Policies_overview_FS (last edited 2019-12-05 12:25:58 by bonnie)