Slovak procurement office recommends making licence requirements specific

Public services in the Slovak Republic that wish to avoid IT vendor lock-in have been advised to make their licence requirements clear – for example by requesting open source – when procuring software and related services. This is one of the recommendations in a case study published last April by the country’s public procurement office and Slovensko.Digital, a non-profit organisation promoting open government and government modernisation.

Slovensko.Digital and the Office for Public Procurement worked together to prepare a call for tender for support services for the procurement office’s own IT systems. They hope that sharing their experience as a case study will help other public services avoid IT vendor lock-in.

Preparing a draft procurement request that is effective in avoiding IT vendor lock-in was a ‘complex process’, they write. It included overhauled evaluation criteria, and resulted in a list of recommendations such as dividing procurement requests into parts to making it easier for competitors to offer alternative solutions.

The case study is by no means intended to focus only on open source. However, specifying that software should be available under an open source licence is an appropriate method to help others, including future services providers, gain access to products, the two organisations write.

The Slovak government procured consulting services from Slovensko.Digital as part of its ‘Better eGovernment solutions in the Slovak Republic’ project.

More information:

Case study (in Slovak)
Slovensko.Digital press release (in Slovak)
Slovensko.Digital