Mandates platform independence and open source
In March, the government of the Slovak Republic officially approved its 2014 guideline on ICT standards. The guide provides detailed instructions for public sector organisations, including mandating making future desktop software solutions platform independent, and making new browser plug-ins and client applications available as open source.
The guideline is made available online. This makes it easier to keep the documents up to date, explains the Ministry of Finance on its portal for the Information Society. The guide is an official addendum to Slovakia’s 2015 Decree on ICT standards.
The guideline mainly provides definitions related to open data. It pushes public administrations to use open application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable integration with other software applications, including those built or used by businesses or citizens. In addition the guideline sets the standards to be used for public sector information systems.
The pros and cons of open source
The ICT standards rules impact Slovakia’s eGovernment strategy, which was updated last year. One of the targets defined in the strategy is that by 2020, 40% of public administration ICT systems in Slovakia should use open source software. According to this strategy, the government is to complete a study on the advantages and disadvantages of open source software before then end of this year.
More information:
OSOR news item
Announcent by the Slovak Information Society portal (in Slovak)