This year half of all the software applications at the Diputación Foral de Bizkaia (the provincial council of Bizkaia, Spain) will be open source, up from 25 percent in November 2014. The goal was announced on 12 November at the start of the LibreCon software conference. “Open-source technology offers competitiveness and savings, boosts the economy, promotes knowledge and makes us more transparent”, a press statement quotes Counsellor of the Presidency, Unai Rementeria, as saying.
The provincial council says its switch to free and open source proves the success, savings and security of the software. The Bizkaia province adopted its policy emphasising the use of free and open source software at public administrations in 2003, twelve years ago.
The migration process was summarised in November at the conference in Bilbao (Spain) by Valentin Garcia Souto, head of development and innovation at the IT department of the Bizkaia council.
The government had been using Centos Linux as one of its server operating systems since 2002. On the desktop the open source migration got well under way in 2005 with a pilot of OpenOffice. This suite of office productivity tools was tried out by all government departments.
Information Society
In 2008, the government partnered with ESLE, an industry trade group representing free software IT service providers in Basque Country. Closely cooperating helps to ensure the government’s technological choices do not discriminate citizens, Mr Garcia said. “ESLE also works with us to promote and contribute to the Information Society.”
In 2012 the government switched many of its CentOS servers to RedHat Linux, Mr Garcia explained at the conference in Bilbao in November. “We started with CentOS in our call centre, but now we’re using Linux on the x64 platform for our strategic projects.”
More information:
Presentation by Valentin Garcia Souto (in Spanish)
Bizakaia council at LibreCon
LibreCon conference website