A study group in the German parliament advises changes to the national budget laws, to allow publishing as open source the software written for or by public administrations. Currently, Germany's budget law prevents public administrations from giving ICT solutions away for free.
In a report made public on Monday, the parliamentary group on 'Interoperability, Standards and Free Software' proposes six measures to boost the uptake of free and open source software by the federal and state authorities. Suggestions include the replenishing of funds for the currently defunct open source competence centre. This could support public administrations that want to switch from proprietary to free software. Such migrations require versatility and being able to face extensive challenges that need to be monitored continuously, the group explains.
The group calls on all public administrations to create new software "as platform-independent as possible".
Open standards
The group, chaired by Free Democratic Party member Jimmy Schulz, also wants the government to actively encourage the use of open standards. This would make access to the government easier for citizens and companies, and it would be an incentive for software development.
The report is the outcome of a series of meetings that took place between June and December, involving experts on interoperability, standards and free software. It was briefed extensively by representatives of the German city of Munich on its successful migration to a complete open source IT environment.
The report will now be submitted to the German parliament. It still has to be adopted by the Bundestag plenary before it becomes an official document.
More information:
Report by the Parliamentary project group on Interoperability, Standards and Free Software (pdf, in German)
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