The government of Extremadura, one of Spain's autonomous regions announced completion of its first e-government web services two weeks ago. The services are built on top of Open Source software.
Using the government's website, citizens can now apply for a fishing or hunting licence. These services can also be accessed over the phone or by visiting government offices.
The government of Extremadura, one of Spain's autonomous regions announced completion of its first e-government web services two weeks ago. The services are built on top of Open Source software.
The completion of this first phase of the region's web services project, was announced on a web blog created especially for the Software Freedom Day that was held on 20 September. The site was created by Plan de Alfabetización Tecnológica y Software Libre de Extremadura (Technology Literacy and Open Source Software in Extremadura, PAT).
"This makes Extremadura the first regional government with a comprehensive e-government system based on open source software", PAT writes.
Work has begun on a customer relations management (CRM) system, which will be made accessible to city councils and departments of the regional government. This system will provide options to handle payments and take care of identification and authentication of users. This CRM system is expected to be operational at the end of this year.
Municipalities
In the days before Software Freedom Day about a hundred representatives of the regional government and city councils met in the region's capital, the city of Mérida.
At a workshop on 18 September, the Federation of Municipalities and Provinces of Extremadura announced plans to increase the use of Open Source. The group will be supported by Cenatic, Spain's national reference centre for Open Source.
Cenatic used the Software Freedom Day to launch a campaign that aims to get more municipalities in the region to use Open Source.
More information:
- Software Freedom Day blog (in Spanish)
- Extremadura al dia newa item (in Spanish)
- Cenatic press release (in Spanish)