Croatia

National level

Recommendations

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.

Parties

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.

Public administration

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.