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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the reducing-costs-and-vendor-lock-in dept.

The European Union's interoperability page reports [europa.eu]

Sweden should bolster its competence on the use of open source and open standards in public administrations, a study for the country's Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation recommends. Public administrations must also be required to consider switching to free and open source alternatives, when procuring [Information and communications technology (ICT)] solutions, and justify why they continue to use proprietary software.

These are three of the seven recommendations listed in the report by Ramboll Management Consulting, submitted to the ministry in late April. The other four are:

• Require an assessment of the total costs of ownership for larger ICT procurements;
• Select national open standards (such as the Open Document Format ODF);
• Disseminate best practices of the use of open source software;
• Rid schools and universities of IT vendor lock-in, by requiring the use of open source alternatives.

[...]The use of open source by Sweden's public administrations is widespread and increasing, the report summarises. Open source is implemented pragmatically--whenever it is the best solution. In general, open source is common in data centre environments, where it is used for web and application servers. Open source is more prevalent in central government organisations than in local administrations.

[...][Besides the typical use of existing FOSS apps,] there are a handful of projects where local and regional public administrations are working together [to build their own] open source solutions.

Original Submission