A study to examine issues in creating a pan-European catalogue of member states’ self-built open source business applications, was recently completed. The study funded by Interoperable Europe forms valuable input to the FOSSEPS Pilot Project, which aims to increase cooperation between European Public Services on the subject of open source.
The use of open source continues to increase across European public administrations, resulting in a large number of business applications created over the last decade. Acknowledging the value of reusing already built government solutions, several member states have built National Application Catalogues, which has already saved significant time and money. One of the key objectives listed in the FOSSEPS Project Charter is to create a European Applications Catalogue, to encourage wider reuse of functioning, proven government business applications, by combining information from national catalogues.
The study by Gartner, a consultancy, recommends that governance of a future EU-wide open source applications catalogue includes political support and actively involves the owners of similar catalogues in the Member States. To make an aggregate successful, Gartner concludes, it should indicate clearly which public services use and reuse any of the listed open source business applications.
The Commission had requested the consultants to analyse software catalogues and open source code development platforms in the EU and beyond. The study details 12 catalogues and repositories in Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. This helped the consultants to design a common data model that could create an EU-wide catalogue.
"Making it easier for public services to discover ready-to-use open source eGovernment business applications can easily help save EUR millions in unnecessary software developments," said MEP Marcel Kolaja (Czech Republic, Green-EFA) who sponsored the FOSSEPS Pilot project in the European Parliament.
Click here to access the study
For more information contact: DIGIT-OSPO@ec.europa.eu