Activities/PMPC/FOI-drafts

On this page you find different drafts for Freedom of Information requests. Feel free to use and/or adapt them.

Draft for a Standard Request for PMPC for local Administrations

  1. What is the number of the tendering processes for the development and support of software used by public institutions in TOWN in the years 2016, 2015 and 2014? Please send me the relevant documents with this information – if possible with project name and the purpose and use cases of the software.
  2. What was the finance volume of the tendering processes for the development and support of software used by public institutions in TOWN in the years 2016, 2015 and 2014? Please send me the documents with the information on the requested budgets – if possible broken down to the different projects.
  3. Please send me all documents regarding the guidelines for tendering processes for the development and support of software used by public institutions in TOWN.
  4. What is the number of software in-house-developments of public administrations or external service providers in the name of TOWN in the years 2016, 2015 and 2014, including cooperations and shared projects? What was the financial budget of the single projects? Please send me the relevant documents.
  5. How many of the software in-house-developments of public administrations or external service providers on behalf of TOWN were published fully or in part under a Free Software licence [1]? Please list the project name and the budget of the relevant projects and it's current status. If a systematical evaluation of all or some projects regarding the chances and benefits of Free Software licences was made, please attach the regarding documents. Please send me the documents regarding this information.
  6. Please name all the software that was developed by or in the name of other municipalities (also other EU-member states) and had been used by the public administration in TOWN in the years 2016, 2015 and 2014. Please send me all the relevant documents.
  7. Please send me a document that summarizes all the free software [2] that is used in the public administration of TOWN. Please name in detail how many devices of the public administration do use the following software: Firefox, Thunderbird, GNU/Linux-Desktop distributions (such as Ubuntu), GnuPG, Gimp, Inkscape, LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Please send a list with information on the used software in the public administration of x with the number of installations.

  8. Please send me all the relevant documents with the information about how many devices inside the public administration of TOWN have the necessary software installed in order to read and send encrypted emails. Please name all the public keys for the safe and encrypted communication of citizen with the public administration of TOWN.
  9. Please give list of the websites run by the public administration of TOWN with date of launch, number of visitors for each year since 2010 and the content management system used to run the website. (For instance: Typo3, Drupal, Wordpress)
  10. Was software you procured later distributed on Google Play or the Apple Itunes store? If so, please include the link to the them. Did you publish the software also for people who do not have Google or Apple accounts?

Draft for a Standard Request for PMPC for a specific IT-Project

  1. Was there a tendering process regarding project x? If yes, please attach the text of the tendering request. If possible, also send the offers that have been sent in.
  2. If there was no tendering process regarding project x, please explain why.
  3. Was licensing of the software under a Free Software licence [2] part of the request catalog in the tendering request or procurement? If yes, please explain why this was eventually not implemented in the result. If no, please explain why the public administration saw no need to insist on using a Free Software licence.
  4. Was there an evaluation process before the procurement, in which an overview was created that summarized if there had been similar projects developed before by other public administrations in COUNTY/COUNTRY/EU-Member States? Was a contact established with other public administrations in order to exchange views about possible synergies with existing software projects under a Free Software licence? Please attach all the relevant documents regarding such an exchange with other public administrations.
  5. Are there any official requirements regarding the systematic evaluation of possible synergies with other public administrations and software under a Free Software licence? If no, please explain why the public administration sees no need to establish such a mechanism. If there is already such a similar rule/regularity in place, please attach all the relevant documents.
  6. What is the financial budget for the development of project x? How high are the annual costs for project x? Was there a difference between the expected and the final costs of project x? Please send me all the relevant documents.
  7. Please name the operating systems that are compatible with project x. If the project is not compatible with LINUX, please explain why this is the case.
  8. Were the exit costs included into the estimated total cost of project x before you acquired it? If yes, please send me the regarding documents.

Draft for a Standard Request for PMPC: Parliamentary Requests

  1. What is the number of tendering processes for the development of software through public administrations or public-private partnerships in COUNTY/COUNTRY since the year 2010, including shared projects and cooperations? This request also includes ongoing projects. Please provide the following information: project name, name of the software, date of the procurement, date of finishing the project, period of usage, if not in use any more please give explanation, planned costs, actual costs, number of installations, annual costs for support (for every year since the project is finished), contracting authority, contractor, eventually name of partners, purpose of usage, licence of the final software.
  2. What is the number of tendering processes for the adjustment for the development of software through public administrations or public-private partnerships in COUNTY/COUNTRY since the year 2010, including shared projects and cooperations? This request also includes ongoing projects. Please provide the following information: project name, name of the software, date of the procurement, date of finishing the project, period of usage, if not in use any more please give explanation, planned costs, actual costs, number of installations, annual costs for support (for every year since the project is finished), contracting authority, contractor, eventually name of partners, purpose of usage, licence of the final software.
  3. In which of the projects named in 1a) and 1b), the development / adjustment of the software with a result under a Free Software licence was a prerequisite in the tendering process?
  4. Please explain for the tendering processes not named in 2. why publishing the software or adjustment of software under a Free Software licence was not a prerequisite during the call for tendering.
  5. What is the number of projects for the adjustment for the development of software through public administrations or public-private partnerships in COUNTY/COUNTRY since the year 2010 that were not part of tendering processes, Including shared projects and cooperations? This request also includes ongoing projects. Please provide the following information: project name, name of the software, date of the procurement, date of finishing the project, period of usage, if not in use any more please give explanation, planned costs, actual costs, number of installations, annual costs for support (for every year since the project is finished), contracting authority, contractor, eventually name of partners, purpose of usage, licence of the final software.
  6. Please explain why the listed projects in answer 4) were not part of a tendering process.
  7. Please explain why the relevant projects listed in answer 4) are not available under a Free Software licence. In case there was a systematical evaluation of one or all projects considering the use of Free Software licences, please attach the relevant documents.
  8. Name the official requests the administrations in COUNTY/COUNTRY received since the year 2010 considering the usage of self-developed software from other public administrations (including requests towards other county governments as well as administrations in other counties) as well as all requests that the public administration or the government of COUNTY send to other governments or public administrations in this matter. Please send a list with the following information: name of person/institutions sending and receiving the request, name of the requested software, date of the request/answer, licence of the software, purpose of the software and result of the request.
  9. Please name all the software that has been developed by other COUNTIES or whose development was financed though other public administrations that is in use in public administrations in COUNTY since the year 2010. Please give the following information: name of the software, responsible institution for the development, purpose, costs of the usage, period of usage.
  10. Name all the software projects under a Free Software licence that are used by public institutions and administrations in COUNTY. Please give the following information: Name of the software, purpose, period of usage, number of installations, list of the using administrations.
  11. Please name in detail how many devices of the public administration do use the following software: Firefox, Thunderbird, GNU/Linux-Desktop distributions (such as Ubuntu), GnuPG, Gimp, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

  12. Please send me documents that give information about how many devices inside the public administration of COUNTY have the necessary software installed in order to read and send encrypted emails. Please name all the public keys for the safe and encrypted communication of citizens with the public administration of COUNTY.
  13. Please give list of the websites run by the public administration of COUNTY with date of launch, number of visitors for each year since 2010 and the content management system used to run the website. (For instance: Typo3, Drupal, Wordpress)

Get inspiration by example: The FSFE's FOI request for Horizon 2020

The rationale

Software is a cardinal part of almost every research project in Horizon 2020 and most of it is acquired or developed with public or public-private funding. We are interested to figure out what percentage of the funding is spent on proprietary licences and what percentage of software developed within Horizon 2020 is released under Free Software licences. Our aim is to aggregate this data and draw conclusions about the situation of software in publicly funded research.

You can read more about the significant role that Free Software licences and Open Standards play for publicly-funded science and innovation in the FSFE's position paper for the endorsement of Free Software and Open Standards in Horizon 2020 and all publicly-funded research, which was submitted to the European Commission as part of the consultation for the midterm evaluation of Horizon 2020, the biggest research funding programme in the world.

The request

On 9 January 2017 the FSFE filed to the European Commission Directorate-General for Research & Innovation, the following Freedom of Information request:

Subject: Expenses and Statistics on Software licences in Horizon 2020

Dear Research and Innovation,

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting documents which contain the following information:

Yours faithfully

[^1]: Free Software licence as approved by the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative.

The response

On 26 January 2017, the European Commission sent back to the FSFE the following reply:

Dear Madam,

Your application for access to documents registered on 10/01/2017 under reference number GestDem 2017/0155 relates to information which is not contained in any existing documents and therefore Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 is not applicable. The Regulation applies only to requests for access to existing documents, meaning "any content whatever its medium (written on paper or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or audio-visual recording) concerning a matter relating to the policies, activities and decisions falling within the institution's sphere of responsibility" (Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001).

Your application was considered a request for information and was processed in accordance with the Code of Good Administrative Behaviour of the European Commission. Therefore we checked if the requested information existed and the competent Commission services informed us that the European Commission does not systematically collect information about open source software used or developed under Horizon 2020 grants, as this is not a reporting requirement in the Horizon 2020 legal basis. Consequently we are not in a position to provide you the information that you are looking for. The same applies to data concerning Horizon 2020 projects paying licence fees for software or developing software on their own.

Yours faithfully, RTD Access to documents, European Commission, DG Research & Innovation, Common Legal Support Service

Activities/PMPC/FOI-drafts (last edited 2017-07-20 16:07:03 by eal)