European administrations should share software on an open source
licensing basis, in order to cut e-government costs, says a study
published by the European Commission. The study, called “Pooling
Open Source Software” was financed by the Commission’s Interchange
of Data between Administrations (IDA) programme, and recommends
creating a clearing house to which administrators could “donate”
software for re-use.
The study suggests that software developed for and owned by
public administrations should be issued under an open source
licence. It also recommends that a software pooling facility should
be made available to EU Member States, to provide quality
guarantees and to help resolve questions of liability. According to
the study, these are the two issues that currently inhibit the
sharing of e-government developments.
However, the report recommends a step-wise implementation of the
pooling facility, “since sharing competence and good practices is
more urgent than sharing software.”
The report says:
“More that simply providing software, the
pooling facility should thus make available expertise and help
create a community of developers, users and policy makers,
providing opportunities for increased cooperation, notably in
software development and testing.”
The cost of e-government in Europe is estimated to increase to
€6.6 billion (28%) in 2002. The study suggests that sharing
e-government tools could lead to “across-the-board improvements in
efficiency of the European public sector.”
The findings of the IDA study were discussed at a specialist
hearing held in Brussels last month, and received broad
acceptance.
The recommendations of the “Pooling Open Source Software” study
are available from the IDA
web site.
