Germany's software applications for procurement will gradually be made available as open source. "The software is paid for by the citizens, and it is therefore reasonable to make the source code publicly available", says Rolf Kewitz, Project Leader eTendering, at the Procurement Agency (BeschA), part of the Ministry of the Interior. Some parts of the tools will have to be rewritten to remove proprietary dependencies.
The e-procurement platform, called E-Vergabe (E-Awarding) is a set of tools used by several federal agencies and some of the country's states and municipalities. There is a separate client, intended to be used by companies that respond to calls for tenders.
Kewitz says E-Vergabe will be made open source step by step. "The first component will be the bid-client, which companies must use to communicate with us." The BeschA expects to be able to release this client application as open source sometime next year.
Depending on the experience with the bid-client, the BeschA will one or two years later publish the source code for the software used by the public administrations. "We think that this is just the beginning", says Kewitz. "Over time our entire E-Vergabe tool will be open source."
Shared copyright
The BeschA shares part of the copyright of the code with the company that developed the software. Kewitz assures that this will not stand in the way of publishing the code as open source, as parts of the applications will have to be partly rewritten. This is needed to remove the current dependencies on proprietary tools, including an interface to a database management system and encryption software.
"We plan to do quite a bit of reprogramming to get rid of this dependency on the database's proprietary SQL-statements. We're thinking of using the Java Persistance Application Programming Interface for this."
"We also know that we will have to change the encryption library. We are looking into switching to open source encryption libraries. These will certainly be just as secure."
The BeschA has not yet decided which open source licence it will use. Kewitz: "Options include the GPL and the Open Government Licence used in the United Kingdom." The BeschA will work closely together with the competence centre of open source software located in the Federal Office of Administration.
The plan to make E-Vergabe available as open source was mentioned in a recent call for tender by the BeschA for future development of the software. That framework contract is worth four million euro. It was awarded to Adesso, an IT firm based in Dortmund.
Development of the E-Vergabe started in 2000.
More information:
e-Vergabe (in German)
e-Vergabe award notice (in German)
e-Vergabe-Plattform des Bundes goes Open Source (in German)