For democracy, governments should have the freedoms of free software.
Arguments
These should each be kept as short as possible.
Knowing what they do
Governments should be able to study what their software is doing with the citizens' data.
Controlling their computing
If computers are used for implementing laws, the government must be in a position to modify the software if the law is modified.
National security
Governments should be able to audit the software they use for security problems. To do this, they must be able to see the source code and they must be able to modify it to fix any problems they find, and they must be able to compile it and use their new modified version.
Language rights
Many countries contain minority languages. Many constitutions say citizens speaking these languages should have rights equal to those who speak the larger languages. To implement this in practice, public administration should provide all computing services in these minority languages. Free Software gives them the freedom to respect the language rights of citizens.
Related pages
Sources for further information
Category/Reasonsfor Category/Publicadministrations