Experience of other countries

From OpenEGov

The International Open Source Network (IOSN) is a Center of Excellence for FOSS in the Asia-Pacific, with a section on FOSS in government. Funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the IOSN is tasked specifically to facilitate and network FOSS advocates and human resources in the region. The vision is that developing countries in the Asia-Pacific Region can achieve rapid and sustained economic and social development by using FOSS ICT solutions to bridge the digital divide.

Egovos, the 'Center of Open Source and Government', concentrates on encouraging the use of open source software in the US government. As part of Egovos, the Government Open Source Advisory Committee (GOSAC) is a group of representatives of many of the most important free software projects who have agreed to help national, state and local government officials understand, use, develop and integrate Open Source projects into civilian and defense US government software projects.

Another US group maintains a list of government policies in relation to open source from around the world.

Proposicion is a site based around a Latin American (Spanish language) mailing list, with several years of experience in working to encourage the use of free software by the state, with particular interest in the legal basis for government software procurement. They maintain a (regularly updated) list of events related to free software in government from around the world.

[edit]

Government Sponsored OSS Information Sites

OSOSS is backed by the Dutch government and includes a list of officially recommended free software.

Lafarga.org is sponsored by the Catalan Generalitat.

Software livre na AP is the Portuguese government's official web site.

Mark Shuttleworth's team are collecting examples of best practice in government open source software for the South African government. The wiki they're using is systematically broken down by government department, though the actual data seems a bit of a mix of news items and software so far.

[edit]

Government Software Repositories

The Dutch OSS repository

The remainder are currently quite new and not very populated yet.

brazilian govt sourceforge (only 1 (12?) project so far!)

South African govt. OSS

http://www.gocc.gov Government Open Code Collaborative Repository - US repository apparently led by State govts. Quite new and little content so far. The policies followed, which strongly limit access, have been strongly criticized (see also the slashdot discssion).

[edit]

Reports and documents

Denmark:

Open source software in e-government

The Danish software strategy

Finland

Recommendation on the openness of the code and interfaces of state information systems

Linux in government

France

Guide to choosing and using free software licences for government and public sector entities

A short talk, describing progress in France - both migration and tool development

(in French):

- Adele 127 (Introduction of free software and collaborative tools to government)
- Adele 128 (Platforms for collaborative work)
- Adele 130 (Office suite migration)