The use of

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

instead of

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and i ...

can give institutions better control over information technology. A growing number of public institutions have started a transition to free-software solutions. This grants independence and can also address the often-argued need for public access to publicly funded developments. This is the only way that public services can ensure that citizen data is handled in a trustworthy manner since non-free software doesn't allow total control (or even knowledge) over the employed functions of the needed programs.

Asia

India

Assam

The Government of

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

state made open source a part of its IT policy.Open Source India News
/ref>

Kerala

The Government of

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

, India, announced its official support for free/open-source software in its State IT Policy of 2001. This was formulated after the first-ever free-software conference in India, "Freedom First!", held in July 2001 in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, where Richard Stallman inaugurated the Free Software Foundation of India. Kerala's Government's support for Free Software in 2001 is perhaps the earliest instance of a Government supporting the use of Free Software. Under the IT@School project the government of

has adopted free and open sourced software for the schools.

Jordan

In January 2010, the

Government of Jordan The politics of Jordan takes place in a framework of a parliamentary monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Jordan is head of government, and of a multi-party system. Jordan is a constitutional monarchy based on the constitution promulgated on ...

announced that it has formed a partnership with

Ingres Corporation Actian is a computer software company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California that provides data management software. In July 2018, Actian was acquired by HCL Technologies and Sumeru Equity Partners for $330 million. On December 31, 2021, HCL Tech ...

, a leading open-source database-management company based in the United States that is now known a
Actian Corporation
to promote the use of open-source software starting wit
university systems in Jordan

Malaysia

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

launched the "Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Program", saving millions on proprietary-software licences till 2008.

Europe

Austria

In 2005

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

migrated from

Microsoft Office 2000 Microsoft Office 2000 (version 9.0) is a release of Microsoft Office, an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for the Windows family of operating systems. Office 2000 was released to manufacturing on March 29, 1999, and was made av ...

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

and from

Microsoft Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

France

National Gendarmerie

The

National Gendarmerie The National Gendarmerie (french: Gendarmerie nationale, ) is one of two national law enforcement forces of France, along with the National Police. The Gendarmerie is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the jurisdiction of the Mini ...

announced in March 2009 that it will totally switch to

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

by 2015. The Gendarmerie has adopted OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird. In 2018, a state-operated Matrix network has been deployed.

National Assembly

The National Assembly of France has had plans to migrate to Linux, OpenOffice.org and Firefox.

Germany

Germany's armed forces commenced using Matrix for internal communications in 2020, creating their own application based upon Element.

Munich

The German City of Munich in 2003 announced its intention to switch from

Microsoft Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

-based operating systems to an open-source implementation of SuSE Linux, In June 2004 after a pilot project run by SuSE Linux and IBM there was a final approval for the migration. On 14 April 2005 the city decided to migrate to Debian from a commercial Linux distribution. An adoption rate of 20% was achieved by 2010.

Schwäbisch Hall

Schwäbisch Hall Schwäbisch Hall (; "Swabian Hall"; from 1802 until 1934 and colloquially: ''Hall'' ) is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg located in the valley of the Kocher river, the longest tributary (together with its headwater Lein) of the ...

migrated its 400 workstations to Linux in late 2002. The factors were cost, better security, escape from the treadmill of vendor-driven upgrades.

Portugal

The Portuguese

Vieira do Minho Municipality Vieira do Minho (, ) is a municipality in the district of Braga, in the north of Portugal. The population in 2011 was 12,997, in an area of 216.44 km². The present mayor is António Cardoso, elected by a coalition between PSD and the CDS� ...

began switching to free and open-source software in 2000.

Romania

IOSSPL is a free and open source software used for public libraries in Romania.

Spain

The City of

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

started to migrate its computer systems away from the Windows platform in 2017. The City's strategy was first to replace all user applications with open-source alternatives, until the underlying Windows operating system is the only proprietary software remaining. In a final step, the operating system replaced with Linux.

North America

Canada

In 2017, the city of

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Sault Ste. Marie ( ) is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is at the St. Mary's River on the Canada–US border. It is the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury and Thunder Bay. The Ojibwe, the indigenous Anishinaabe inhabitants ...

, opened up most of its new internal software development efforts to reduce its own software costs, and increase collaboration with other municipalities looking to solve similar problems.

United States

In September 2006, the

Commonwealth of Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

announced its formal adoption of the OpenDocument standard for all Commonwealth entities. In February 2009, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

moved its website to Linux servers using Drupal for content management. In August 2016, the

United States government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

announced a new federal

source-code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

policy. This policy mandates that at least 20% of custom source code developed by or for any agency of the federal government must be released as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

(OSS). Also available as HTML at: In addition, the policy requires that all source code be shared between agencies. The public release is under a three-year pilot program and agencies are obliged to collect data on this pilot to gauge its performance. The overall policy aims to reduce duplication, avoid vendor 'lock-in', and stimulate collaborative development. A new website provides "an online collection of tools, best practices, and schemas to help agencies implement this policy", the policy announcement stated. It also provides the "primary discoverability portal for custom-developed software intended both for Government-wide reuse and for release as OSS". As yet unspecified OSS licenses will be added to the code. The US Chief Information Officer Tony Scott, co-author of the policy, blogged "This is, after all, the People's code. Explore it. Learn from it. Improve it. Use it to propel America's next breakthrough in innovation."

South America

Argentina

The government of

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

launched the program Conectar Igualdad (Connect Equality), through

ANSES The National Social Security Administration ( es, Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social; mostly known for its acronym ANSES) is a decentralized Argentine Government social insurance agency managed under the aegis of the Ministry of He ...

and the

Ministry of Education (Argentina) The Ministry of Education ( es, link=no, Ministerio de Educación; ME) of Argentina is a ministry of the national executive power that oversees education policies on all educational levels, alongside the governments of the twenty-three province ...

launched during the presidency of

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner (; born 19 February 1953), often referred to by her initials CFK, is an Argentine lawyer and politician who has served as the Vice President of Argentina since 2019. She also served as the President o ...

, that gave kids on public schools free laptops to use for educative purposes. By default, it came with Huayra GNU/Linux, a free and open-source Linux operating system developed by the Argentinian technology ministry, based on Debian, using the MATE Desktop.

Brazil

The government of

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

migrated from Microsoft Windows to Linux. In 2006, the

Brazilian government The politics of Brazil take place in a framework of a federal presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. The political and administrative o ...

also encouraged the distribution of cheap computers running Linux throughout its poorer communities by subsidizing their purchase with tax breaks.

Ecuador

In April 2008,

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ' ...

passed a similar law, Decree 1014, designed to migrate the public sector to Libre Software.

Peru

In 2005, the

Government of Peru , border = Central , image = , caption = Logo of the Government of Peru , date = 1990 , state = Peru , address = Government Palace , leader_title = President of PeruWhile there i ...

voted to adopt open source across all its bodies. The 2002 response to Microsoft's critique is available online. In the preamble to the bill, the Peruvian government stressed that the choice was made to ensure that key pillars of

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which people, the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choo ...

were safeguarded: "The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law."

Venezuela

In 2004, a law in

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

(Decree 3390) went into effect, mandating a two-year transition to open source in all public agencies. As of June 2009 this ambitious transition is still under way.Venezuela Open Source

References

{{reflist

External links

Free software in public administration, beta
* https://web.archive.org/web/20080223124448/http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/chapter/470

IDABC All European countries show eGovernment initiatives, mainly related to the improvement of governance at the national level. Significant eGovernment activities also take place at the European Commission level as well. There is an extensive list ...

Open Source Case Studies Free and open-source software