[open-government] Joinup reports on EP's tendering of two studies on ICT transparency in the institution

Fri Jul 26 12:29:34 UTC 2013

HELO,

I think it would be great if folks experienced with procurement could
follow up on the FSFE+OKFN's call to the EP President on the two studies
that should be tendered:

    MEPs and advocacy groups press EP for reports on open source
    https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/meps-and-advocacy-groups-press-ep-reports-open-source

The specs. for the studies are quite open, so external input on what you
would expect from these studies to be usable would be extremely helpful!

Just write to Schulz what you'd expect to be covered.

Thanks in advance.

//Erik

    MEPs and advocacy groups press EP for reports on open source

*The Green/EFA Group in the European Parliament, the Free Software
Foundation Europa and the United Kingdom's Open Rights Group are
pressing the European Parliament to produce two reports on its use and
development of free software and open ICT standards.*

In a letter from 10 July, The Green/EFA Group are urging the President
of the European Parliament to produce two studies on free software. They
first want an update on the Parliament's internal free software
development projects. Secondly, they ask the president if the
parliament's internal rules on transparency and public access should
have consequences for its choices of software solutions and IT standards.

It is the third time the MEPs make their request, after adding it to
plenary resolutions in April this year and in May 2012. The group has
made the reports on the EP's use of free software one of the
requirements for their approval of the 2010 and 2011 budgets of the
European Parliament. One of the studies would amount to be the first
overview of where and how the European Parliament is using free and open
source software solutions.

Such a study could provide details on the use of Ubuntu, which is
installed on all the laptops of the members of the European parliament.
It could report on the EP's shelved Linux desktop pilot, include a list
of free software tools that are used and that are being considered and
show the resources spent on this type of solutions.

          Electric document

Two advocacy groups added to the request by the Green/EFA Group. The
Free Software Foundation Europe and the UK's Open Rights Group wrote the
European Parliaments President, offering their assistance and suggests:
"As the Parliament is held to a standard of 'utmost transparency', would
it be obliged to make public the source code of the software it uses?"
They also hint that the European Parliament should use a vendor
independent electronic document file format that is fully implemented in
free software office productivity packages.

The letter from the Green/EFA Group followed a workshop by the Legal
Affairs Committee in the European Parliament on 'Legal aspects of free
and open source software' on 9 July. The meeting included presentations
by Eben Moglen, chairman of the US-based Software Freedom Law Center,
Jutta Kreyss, IT-architect for the German city of Munich and Giancarlo
Vilella, heading the European Parliament's IT organisation. It was
organised in concert with the Libre Software Meeting, which took place
in Brussels that week.

          More information:

Announcement by the FSFE & ORG
<https://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20130716-01.en.html>
FSFE & ORG 's public letter
<https://fsfe.org/activities/os/transparency-letter>
Joinup news item
<https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/report-european-parliaments-free-software-use-coming>
Joinup news item
<https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/munich-ecs-guideline-ict-standards-not-enough>
Joinup news item
<https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/libre-software-meeting-makes-room-european-politicians>

      Documentation

application/pdf iconLetter by the Green/EFA Group to the EP President
(pdf)
<https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/letter_president_schulz_free_software.pdf>

-- 
Erik Josefsson
Advisor on Internet Policies
Greens/EFA Group
<http://www.greens-efa.eu/36-details/josefsson-erik-138.html>
GSM: *+32484082063*
BXL: PHS 04C075 TEL: +3222832667
SBG: WIC M03005 TEL: +33388173776
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