Fall2008/Open Source in Public Services/Chris Brousseau
From OpenSourceSoftwarePractice
Contents |
European Union
Government
"At the 6th NorthEast Asia Open Source SW Promotion Forum held in Seoul on the 12 September 2007 Christophe Forax, representing the EU Telecom and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding, stated that Europe should better monetize open source software."
http://robertogaloppini.net/2007/11/29/open-source-government-europe-buying-or-watching-open-source/
Health Care
"Europe has had a leading role in adopting and popularizing open source technologies. But open source and open standards are still rare sights in healthcare IT, both in Europe and in the United States. Why? Let's look at the status of these projects and address some of the barriers to implementation."
http://healthcareitnews.eu/content/view/212/44/
Education
"The European Commission, the European Union's executive branch, has launched a Web site aimed at improving understanding of open-source software.
"The site adds to the EU's substantial moves to support open source, which is seen by many EU member states as a way of cutting public-sector costs, stimulating the local software industry and fostering interoperability free of proprietary constraints.
"The Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) site, launched earlier this month, is part of the EC's Information Society program, which focuses on technology's impact on government and society. It brings together information about EU research programs and e-government initiatives related to open source. "
http://news.cnet.com/2100-7344_3-5130665.html
Military / Intelligence
"The ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF) is now one of the mandatory standards in NATO.
"The military alliance included the Open Standard for electronic documents recently in its so-called NATO Interoperability Standards and Profiles. NISP lists all standards that are in use by NATO, ranging from mandatory to recommended.
"According to NATO's documentation, NISP is meant to support interoperability between the various national systems. "Services must be implemented using a range of de jure and de facto standards."
"The inclusion was reported last week by NOIV, the Dutch government project to increase the use of Open Source and Open Standards by Dutch public administrations. According to NOIV's programme manager Ineke Schop, ODF was included at the suggestion of the Dutch ministry of Defense. "We knew that the ministry had suggested it to NATO a while ago. Last week we were informed that it had been included."
http://www.osor.eu/news/eu-nato-makes-odf-one-of-its-mandatory-standards
France
Government
"The French government will make Paris a centre of excellence for open-source software development, it has announced.
"French Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry, Thierry Breton, said the goal of the centre will be to develop a healthy and profitable open-source software industry."
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=7508
Health Care
"A French nurse has put together a CD-Rom of Open Source applications for use in health organisations. The CD-Rom is meant to encourage students and health workers to use Open Source applications.
"The CD-Rom is the initiative of Christophe Tavernier, a nurse at "Centre Hospitalier" in La Rochelle, a city on the west coast of central France. The effort is supported by FORMA ICT Health association.
"The CD-Rom is a second step in Tavernier's work to bring Open Source applications to the attention of his colleagues in the health sector. A year ago he launched Silibre, a French web site."
http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-open-source-for-health-care-organisations
Education
"The department at the French Ministry of Education that is handling purchasing of software and software licenses is increasing its Open Source offerings to some 1.5 million teachers and education workers in 250 institutes France.
"This is how Dominique Verez, spokesperson for the 'Software Group for Higher Education and Research', explains a recent agreement it signed with Mandriva, a French company developing a GNU/Linux distribution by the same name. The two agreed last month on a 60 percent discount for the purchase of the commercial version of the free software for all teachers and staff at France's schools and universities. "Our goals are to promote alternative solutions, to offer more choice and to make our users less dependent on software vendors."
"Verez estimates that at present barely 10 percent of France's postgraduate schools and universities use any form of GNU/Linux. He says a similar percentage is using Max OS X. "The majority is still using Microsoft."
http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-education-ministry-encourages-open-source-use
Military / Intelligence
"The French ministry of Defence will give preference to Open Source software and open standards for its IT projects.
"The ministry aims to increase its use of Open Source software. "We will make an effort before any acquisition or any internal development, to identify whether an alternative or comparable solution in Open Source software is available", the IT department writes in its directive about software use in the Ministry, published in March.
"Open Source software will be selected if in comparison with proprietary or custom build software, function, costs and risks are equal, the IT department writes.
"The department expects some Open Source projects to be improved by the Defence IT workers, resulting in certification of the software. "To support competition and the innovation in market dominated by a monopoly, the ministry for Defence will when possible contribute to Open Source development projects."
http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-ministry-of-defence-prefers-open-source
UK
Government
"The Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) in Great Britain is participating in a local-government study of worldwide scope regarding their readiness for the e-government framework envisioned by planners (http://www.vnunet.com/News/1130353). Socitm has criticized Microsoft's licensing policies and is evaluating Sun Microsystems' StarOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Twenty local governments are already trying out StarOffice, and some 300 desktops at the Penwith (Cornwall) District Council have made the switch. As in Finland, lower licensing costs are given as the reason.
"The British Office of Government Commerce, which acts for the central administration in Great Britain, is already set up to deliver orders of StarOffice to interested government units."
http://www.stromian.com/Corner/Apr2002.html
Health Care
"The history of information system development in British healthcare is not a happy one. High profile cases of duplication and waste make it an area of considerable managerial and political nervousness. And when managers get nervous, bureaucracy burgeons. Britain spends less on healthcare than other comparable nations, which means that IT professionals who want the highest financial rewards will work in other sectors. The commissioning system for IT within the NHS is cumbersome and bureaucratic, and despite much talk of "customer need" within the new look NHS Information Authority, it remains rigidly hierarchical, narrowly focused, and based on outdated business models. NHS organisations usually buy approved commercial systems and have no access to the source code of the applications they run.
"Gradually, though, an appreciation of what open source might offer health informatics is developing. The fact that the software is free is plainly a major attraction. But for most organizations licensing and hardware is only a fraction of the the total cost of ownership of an information system: customization, maintenance, training and upgrading cost far more. It is here that open source has the potential to excel: every application is open from top to bottom making extensive customization and maintenance possible. And because thousands of users have submitted bug reports and fixes for the basic system software over the years, open source operating systems are famed for their reliability."
http://www.informatics-review.com/open.html
Education
"For the first time, the British Office for Government Commerce (OGC) included an Open Source company, Sirius, on its list of preferred suppliers of software and IT services, the IT news site Inquirer reported this week.
"UK FlagThe so-called Software for Educational Institutions framework is drawn up by the OGC and Becta, the British educational IT agency. The list of preferred suppliers is meant to replace the current agreement, which expires in October.
"The new list will remain in force for four years and Becta estimates that in that time schools will spend about 80 million GBP (100 million euro) on software licences and IT services. The IT agency expects the list "to deliver significant savings over what could be achieved via ad-hoc procurement mechanisms".
http://www.osor.eu/news/uk-open-source-company-in-list-of-schools-software-suppliers
Military / Intelligence
"The Open Source Center’s (OSC) Open Source Academy (OSA) has won recognition as a leading provider of OS tradecraft training in the Intelligence Community (IC) since its establishment in 2003. Intelligence consumers are placing a greater value on open source intelligence (OSINT), prompting OS specialists from the IC, policy and military communities, and other federal government organizations to take advantage of OSA courses to build their OS skills.
"The Academy’s core curriculum includes instructor-led courses on a growing range of topics including basic tradecraft, Internet exploitation, and reviewing finished intelligence products. OSA Provost Dave Kraus explains that there is more than meets the eye to using OS data. He says, “Our analytic tradecraft courses teach how to analyze the media, including ownership of media organizations and their political leanings. The courses on Internet exploitation go beyond the casual search skills that we’ve developed at home and in school. There are very precise search and research strategies, that are not intuitive, to cull valuable information from the Internet."
http://universityofmilitaryintelligence.us/mipb/article.asp?articleID=113&issueID=6
Germany
Government
"German Federal Government to Support Open Source Software
"The German government has announced its official support for the use of open source software in civil administration, believing it to offer valuable competition with potential benefits for security issues and encryption standards."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/408271
Health Care
"The medical centre of German city of Görlitz has cut its IT costs by standardising on Open Source software, says Helmut Stahr, director of the hospital's data processing unit.
"The centre has been using Open Source software for years. Since 2003, the IT department has been managing over one thousand email accounts on GNU/Linux. It also employs Open Source software solutions for both its servers and operating systems. The 1.125 medical employees, working in one of its sixteen specialised hospitals, two research institutes and several medical centres, all use the Open Source collaboration server Open-Xchange.
"In November 2007, the public institution updated to Open-Xchange server 5, a renewed version with better features. Stahr says this GNU/Linux-based software offers Open Standards, open interfaces and professional support. "These are basic prerequisites for secure applications in daily clinic routine." The migration to the recent release took place in a short period of only three days."
http://www.osor.eu/news/de-hospital-cuts-costs-with-open-source
Education
" Fifteen universities in the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia will begin using the Open Source operating system GNU/Linux on the desktop, claims Novell, distributor of Suse GNU/Linux.
"The software company earlier this week signed a general software licence deal with a consortium of 33 universities, represented by the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf. For fifteen of these universities, this should result in offering GNU/Linux as an option for desktop PCs.
A company spokesperson said: "The biggest universities included in this contract that have Open Source desktop plans are Köln, Münster and Paderborn and the Fachhochschulen -- polytechnic universities -- in Bielefeld, Süd-Westphalen and Aachen."
http://www.osor.eu/news/de-fifteen-universities-to-use-linux-on-the
Military / Intelligence
"The German Federal Armed Forces has delayed using a new set of bookkeeping applications from SAP due to problems installing the software, according to an article published Thursday in the German business magazine Handelsblatt. The delays are costing the German government 350,000 euros (£226,235) a day in unplanned fees for outside consulting on the project, the article says.
"The SAP applications are the centrepiece of a 10-year, 6.5bn euro computer modernisation effort under way at the military agency, the magazine said. SAP, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, is one of the world's largest suppliers of software applications designed to automate bookkeeping, order processing, and inventory tracking for businesses."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,2126372,00.htm
Italy
Government
"The Tuscany region in Northern Italy will begin to promote Open Source software in schools, universities and businesses.
"Both the administration of the Tuscany region and the Pisa province, the University of Pisa and the Navacchio business development centre (Polo Technologico) signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday of last week "to promote research and technology dissemination and application of Open Source solutions".
"The four organisations agreed to fund an Open Source centre, run by the province of Pisa. Its objective is to extend the use of Open Source software in education, for research and by business. The centre will begin by offering training initiatives for technical and administrative staff of public administrations and enterprises.
"In a statement, the vice-president of the Tuscany Region, Federico Gelli, said the activities should help give the Open Source centre in Pisa national importance and lead to increasing uses of this type of software and ensure its quality and affordability.
"The administration of the Tuscany region is itself increasing its use of Open Source applications on its desktop PCs, writes Gelli on his own website. It also is turning to Open Source applications for government projects, he said. There are currently 45 projects that are using Open Source software.
http://www.osor.eu/news/it-tuscany-to-increase-use-of-open-source
Health Care
"Raleigh, NC — October 23, 2007 — Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that three leading Italian organizations, including CSI-Piemonte, one of the top fifteen software and services companies in Italy, Iride Energia, a leading thermal and electric energy provider in Italy and the City of Marsala have found success with Red Hat solutions. Each has experienced heightened performance, cost-savings and increased reliability with solutions including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Support.
"CSI-Piemonte, responsible for delivering IT solutions to public bodies in the Piemonte region of Italy, conducted extensive research as it searched for a platform for the development of business services for local public administration. Ultimately, it selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for the solutions’ well-established reputation, professional support and for their rapid rate of innovation. The implementation project began in 2006 and was carried out in-house with Red Hat Support. The new platform is a hosted solution that is used by CSI-Piemonte customers to run and develop their own applications, which can be used by all public bodies in Piemonte. With Red Hat solutions, the platform guarantees superior service levels, cost-savings and high reliability, enabling CSI-Piemonte’s clients to concentrate on their core business."
Education
"The University of Perugia is offering a master course on Open Source. "Software developers and IT policy makers need to understand the importance and potential of this type of software and how to combine it with proprietary IT systems."
http://www.osor.eu/news/it-university-starts-open-source-master-course
Netherlands
Government
"The Danish government last week published Open Source tools that can help IT-service providers build applications that connect to government web-services.
"The software helps and shows how to construct applications that can use Danish government web services such as its citizen portal 'borger.dk' and the business-to-government portal 'virk.dk', in order to establish authentication and authorisation of Danish citizens and legal entities. IT services can use these to build new applications."
http://www.osor.eu/news/dk-government-publishes-open-source-web-services-tools
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Spain
Government
"Looking for an Open Source/Open Standard Solution
"At the end of 2002, the "Conselleria de Infraestructuras y Transporte" (Council of Infrastructure and Transportation) of the "Generalitat Valenciana" (Regional Government of the Comunidad Valenciana in Spain) began a global migration towards open systems under Linux. Due to its heavy use in the Conselleria, this process required a focused examination of GIS and CAD software migration. Further, GIS and CAD are relative newcomers to the Free and Open Source (FOSS) software world, meaning few widely used options are available.
"The Conselleria began by defining their requirements and then did an evaluation comparing FOSS solutions to commercially developed proprietary software. A survey gathered information from current and future users about their requirements for working with spatial information. The survey collected a great deal of data including specifics on the type of tasks to be addressed and the performance of software and hardware of the surveyed users. It addressed both graphical and non-graphical data, GIS/CAD tools and integration, formats and data types, common operations, frequency of use and other considerations."
http://ogcuser.opengeospatial.org/node/113
Health Care
Education
"The University of Zaragoza this month began promoting the use of Open Source software to its teachers and students, writes Europapress, a Spanish news service. In the past two weeks four presentations were held at the University campuses, targeting diverse groups studying for example Economics and Business Administration or Veterinary science.
"The Open Source promotion campaign began last summer. "There is a need to promote and develop free and Open source software in the academic community", the University said in a statement at the time. "This type of software shares academic values, such as research, innovation and collaboration. Using Open Source software as tools for teaching and education gives teachers more choice, strengthens academic freedoms and ensures that students acquire independent computer skills."
"The university's Bureau for Free Software began its promotion campaign by making Open Source applications available on a website. It now will start organising lectures and by offering courses. "We aim to encourage, support and disseminate Open Source software and open standards." The bureau wants to develop training programmes for Open Source tools that can be used by administration, teaching and research. The university also plans to detail rules requiring academic institutions to justify the purchase of commercial software for new IT projects."
http://www.osor.eu/news/es-university-of-zaragoza-promotes-open-source
Military / Intelligence
Sweden
Government
"The Swedish National Police is moving its IT systems over to Open Source. According to a press release by MySQL AB, the Swedish company developing the open source database management system MySQL, the police force will be using its database, the Java application server JBoss, webserver Apache and Suse GNU/Linux.
"The company says the police has already started with the migration of several existing systems. "In the future, IT solutions will strictly be based on this Open Source software solution." The company says the main arguments of the decision are costs savings and performance.
"Our primary aims are to cut costs and reduce the risk of vendor lock-in while maintaining the high reliability and security inherent in police work," Per-Ola Sjöswärd, Executive IT-strategist for the Swedish National Police, is quoted by MySQL AB."
http://www.osor.eu/news/se-police-to-use-open-source-database-system
Health Care
"The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) based in the city of Stockholm, Sweden, says Open Source statistical models will help to increase the number of researchers using these models for analysis.
"The institute is currently asking IT-suppliers to submit offers for Open Source mathematical modelling tools to be used in medical research and for making decision on public health. The institute will use one of the modelling tools to make HIV prevalence estimates per country. "The final product has to be a set of user-friendly models which can be applied by all EU member states", ECDC writes in its tender document.
"It simultaneously requests offers for the development of an Open Source mathematical model, to be used to research the effects of vaccines on certain types of viral diseases, such as chickenpox."
Education
Military / Intelligence
"The Swedish army is considering migrating some of its servers to GNU/Linux. How many and when the switch over takes place has not been made public. Earlier this month, GNU/Linux distributor Red Hat announced the armed forces of Sweden is replacing more than a hundred servers running Microsoft Windows NT with machines using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
"The exact number of NT servers migrated to this version of GNU/Linux is unclear. Red Hat spokespeople mention "several hundreds, up to 300." A spokeswoman for FMLOG, the IT service desk of the Swedish army, describes the deal to affect about a hundred machines.
"The February 6 Red Hat press release on the army deal was withdrawn after a few days. "The Swedish army was unhappy with some of the statements made", explains a PR representative. "But the Swedish army is considering migrating to Linux. But apart from the hundreds of servers migrated to Red Hat, they have not decided on Linux distribution, scale of the migration or the date."
http://www.osor.eu/news/se-swedish-army-considers-server-migration-to-gnu
Norway
Government
"Norway encourages use of open source software
"Norway pledged funds Monday to stimulate public sector use of the free open source software OpenOffice to reduce its dependency on Microsoft Corp. and other major software producers."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008401043_apeunorwayopensource.html
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Finland
Government
"The Finnish state administration is considering a switch from Windows to Linux; it has some 147,000 computers and estimates its savings at as much as 26 millions euros per year. Currently 88% of all these machines are using Windows, while 13% of the servers are using Linux, brainchild of the Finn Linus Torvalds (see http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20020311IE5, Finnish version at http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/arkisto/juttu.asp?id=20020309TA10). The savings in licensing fees provides the main motive for considering the change, and officials are concerned that a partial instead of a total move to Linux would result in the added costs of running two instead of one system."
http://www.stromian.com/Corner/Apr2002.html
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Russia
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
China
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Japan
Government
"The Japanese government wants to go open source, as a way to rely less on a single vendor IT software infrastructure. And plenty of vendors are lining up to help make this happen."
http://www.linuxworld.com/newsletters/linux/2007/0507linux2.html
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
South Korea
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Brazil
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Argentina
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Israel
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
India
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Canada
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
Mexico
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
United States
Government
Health Care
Education
Military / Intelligence
- Massachusetts
Government
Health Care
Education
- California
Government
Health Care
Education
- New York
Government
Health Care
Education
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