The European Commission's ISA programme (Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations) is organising a workshop on the opportunities and challenges of public administrations working with communities of open source software developers, on 12 January in Granada, Spain. The workshop brings together eleven speakers, some with close ties to open source communities and others government representatives involved in the development of this type of software.
The workshop coincides with the Open Source World Conference (OSWC), organised by the administration of Spain's autonomous region of Andalucia, which takes place the next day in the same venue
The EC's workshop programme is divided in three. The first session involves two well-connected developers of open source software, Gnome developer Dave Neary and Simon Phipps, director of the Open Source initiative. They will discuss with Miquel Jague Barbero, director of Cenatic, the Spanish government's resource centre on open source, and Karel De Vriendt, the former head of unit at ISA, retired in December.
The second session will showcase four pan-European open source software development projects. Francisco García Morán, Director General for Informatics (DIGIT), will talk about the open source software strategy of the European Commission. Next, Szabolcs Székács, project officer at the European Commission will present Joinup. The third speaker is Didier Thunus, project manager at the European Commission, who will present ePrior, an e-Procurement solution. Fourth topic is open source at the European Citizen’s Initiative, an instrument for public participation in shaping European Union policy. This presentation is by Cristian Dobre, Head of Section at the European Commission.
Practical examples of public administration projects involving open source communities make up the third session, with presentations on the Swiss document management system for the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, OpenJustitia, presented by Matthias Stürmer, on OpenStreetMap, presented by Gaël Musquet, president of OpenStreetMap France, a presentation on the eLearning portal Frikomport by Britt Inger, coordinator for SuksIt in Norway, and a recent study on open source communities by Cenatic, presented by Pop Ramsamy, head of Cenatic's Observatory.
The workshop is open to the public. Those interested to attend, should put a tick mark on the registration form on the OSWC website.
More information:
Open Source World Conference site