The French government just published a request for ICT service providers to offer support including Debian and Centos based Linux systems, Le Monde Informatique reports. The three-year contract is worth two million euro and involves 16 of the country's 22 ministries and the Court of Audit.
The request for support comprises 350 open source applications, used in may ICT areas. This list is five and a half pages long.
The government is looking for support for the use of Debian and Centos Linux-based operating systems, and specific open source virtualisation tools, mail servers, web servers, application servers, content management systems, relational database management systems, office applications, network and security tools, directory services and document management systems.
The request for support involves two thirds of France's 22 ministries, including the Office of the Prime Minister and the ministries of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Internal Affairs, Justice, Labour, Education, Agriculture and Culture.
The tender is organised by the IT department of the Ministry of the Interior, Overseas Territories, Territorial Communities and Immigration.
Companies interested will need to go through twelve documents, and answering about 80 detailed questions, ranging from the level of support to what the company will do in case an open source community does not support or no longer support a certain feature or version of an open source application.
The deadline for submitting an offer is 9 January 2012. Announcement of the awarding of the contract is planned for 30 March.
More information:
Procurement documents (in French)
Le Monde Informatique news item (in French)