2009

Eurostat: Standards and Open Source Software for Data Interoperability - Mai. 2009  105.7 kB

Eurostat collects and publishes huge amounts of data each year, and exchanges many datasets with other large organisations. This exchange was constantly suffering from a lack of interoperability, as data needed to be converted from one organisation's convention into another, a process which consumes both time and money. Different organisations were also using very different tools to work with the data, which caused further problems. In late 2001, Eurostat got together with a number of EU committees to discuss the need for greater interoperability within the European public sector. In 2005, IDABC agreed to fund the SDMX Open DATA Interchange (SODI) project. Thanks to previous cooperations between Eurostat and other international institutions, the SDMX standard quickly found a large group of sponsors, all of which hoped to benefit from the greater interoperability afforded by using a single standard, and the tools built on it. These tools were developed by Eurostat and other sponsoring institutions, and many of them were published under the EUPL license. The SDMX Converter is an example of the successful development and publication of a tool that is essential for working with the SDMX standard.

Noruega - FrikomPort: Sharing Code, Costs and Benefits - Mai. 2009  594.0 kB

In 2006 the Norwegian region of Kongsberg launched a portal to coordinate and administrate courses and trainings for municipality staff. The solution was developed with open source tools, as a common effort of all seven municipalities of the Kongsberg region. Once the project was working successfully, other municipalities and organisations became interested and wanted to use the portal as well. The Kongsberg region eventually published FriKomPort, as the portal was called, as a free software application under the GPL. The portal today is used by more than 50 organisations, and practically all users are very confident about the solution. For the future the FriKomPort leaders hope to share the portal with even more municipalities by publishing an English version.

Coss Competence Centre Finland: More than just five guys holding a torch - 2009  52.9 kB

In late 2003 a team around Petri Räsäsnen from the Technology Centre Hermia together founded the Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions (COSS). The centre's main aim is to promote open source software in the public and the private sector. Initially the centre started with an annual government-funded budget of ¬ 150.000. Today, COSS has more than 140 members, and is actively involved in the Finnish open source ecosystem. While its services have been mostly addressed to small and medium sized businesses as well as the public sector, the centre is trying to broaden its range of services to address the end user.

Open source on the desktops of the Swiss Federal Court and Federal Administrative Court: Organisational challenges - 2009  476.5 kB

In 2001 the Swiss Federal Court moved its IT infrastructure to Solaris by Sun Microsystems, using StarOffice as a text processor. This move was necessary, as the previously deployed all-in-one platform that was used since the early 1990s could no longer meet the needs of the Federal Court. With this also came the introduction of open source applications such as Gnome, Firefox and the Evolution mail client. Among the goals were vendor independence and the implementation of open standards. The IT solution was extended to the newly formed Swiss Federal Administrative Court in 2007, where it has struggled to find acceptance mainly due to organisational reasons.

Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan - 2009  73.0 kB

Plano de acção do Governo britãnico destinado a promover a utilização de tecnologias abertas em todo o sector público do Reino Unido.

Towards the freedom of the operating system: The French Gendarmerie goes for Ubuntu - 2009  302.2 kB

In 2001 the Gendarmerie Nationale, France's national police force, started introducing open source software. The main goals were to gain greater independence and flexibility than proprietary software could offer. The decision to migrate all new workstations to Ubuntu, taken in January 2008, was the most important step in this transition so far.