Kosovo: 'Ownership of e-government code a step towards open source'
The ministry of Public Administration now owns the source code to many of the country's applications that offer electronic government services. This is progress towards open source, said the deputy minister of Energy and Mining, Blerim Rexha, speaking at the Software Freedom Kosova Conference that took place last week in Prishtina. "Previously, the government only had the executables, not the source code."
The government of Kosovo earlier this year began a project to implement all public administration services in electronic form. This plan is to be carried out over the next six years.
Most of these e-government services are based on proprietary software, minister Rexha said. "The government lacks knowledge on free and open source software, and there are many international IT companies increasing their presence in emerging markets."
The Software Freedom Kosova Conference was organised by the University of Pristina and the Free Libre Open Source Software Kosovo (Flossk).
Minister Rexha, who is also a professor at the university, called the conference the first step on a long journey. "This shows Kosovo has the human capacity for a modern approach." He said he expects the conference will help show the country's public administrators that there are alternative ways to offer e-government services, which could help to save public resources.
In an recorded interview available on the conference website, Rexha points out that the main sponsor of the conference is the Prime Minister's office. "There is a lack of technology know-how in the government, therefore the government supports such initiatives."
He announced the government will soon propose to parliament a law regarding intellectual property rights.
According to one of the organisers, the conference had more than 500 attendees. They plan to hold a second Software Freedom Kosova Conference next year.
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