The government of Croatia is starting the Working group for the implementation of open source and open standards. The decision to create the working group was taken during the third meeting of the Government's Commission for Coordination of Informatisation of the Public Sector held on 28th of March. The commission includes several government ministers and is headed by Croatia's Deputy Prime Minister, Milanka Opačić.
The group will be hosted by the Ministry of Public Administration. Darko Parić, assistant Minister in the Office for e-Croatia will provide necessary help and guidance.
It is expected that the group will provide consulting to ministries and other public administrations that wish to adopt open source software and open file formats. The group will provide guidance for public procurement of software related services and can help with pilot projects.
The group could result in the creation of a resource centre. Other plans include localisation of popular software and the making of distributions of applications tailored to specific groups of users. The working group will also facilitate the international exchange of knowledge and plans to push for the increased use of open source in the country's education sector.
The working group will be led by Kristijan Zimmer, head of the IT support centre at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb. He is the former president of HrOpen, one of two major open source and open standards advocacy groups in Croatia. Zimmer is a member of the Executive Council of OpenForum Europe, an open standards advocacy organisation.
More information:
Press release by the Ministry of Public Administration (in Croatian)
Announcement by the Ministry of Public Administration (pfd, in Croatian)
Announcement by the Croatian Linux User Group (in Croatian)
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