EU and Europe-wide

EU: International team developing open source hospital information system — published on Aug 31, 2010

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An international team of software developers specialising in medical systems is working on a hospital information system. Earlier this month on the OSOR Forge, the project began soliciting others to join the team. "If you are willing to participate in this great community, there are plenty of things to be done, from translation, quality control, adding new functionality to localization."

EU: Rise in use of EUPL for publishing open source software — published on Aug 31, 2010

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The European Union's open source licence, (European Union Public Licence, EUPL) is being used more and more. A quarter of the projects available on the European Commission's software development site, the OSOR Forge, 47 out of 183 projects, are published using the EUPL. On Sourceforge, a commercial venture for open source software development based in the US, the licence is now selected by 49 projects. One year ago there were none.

EU: Guide on procurement of open source revised — published on Aug 21, 2010

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The Guideline on public procurement of Open Source Software, was revised in June 2010. The latest version includes references to recent procurement policies developed by Spain and Malta and to this year's approval by Italy's constitutional court on the country's Piedmont regional administration procurement law.

EU: 3.3 million to continue projects on open source and reusable data — published on Jul 17, 2010

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The European Commission is planning to spend 3.344 million Euro until 2016 to continue the services provided by its projects - such as OSOR.eu and Semic.eu - on open source and on electronic data exchange.

'Over seventy cases studies on OSOR just the beginning' — published on Jun 18, 2010

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The European Union's Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) has so far published 72 case studies. It's most recent one, on the OSOR itself, was published last week.

EU agency publishes tool to check trade mark names and meaning — published on Jun 15, 2010

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The prototype of a tool to check whether the name of a trade mark application has a meaning in any of the EU's official languages, is published as open source by the EU's Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), the agency that is responsible for registering trade marks and designs.

Debate on government's use of open source and open data — published on Jun 14, 2010

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Public administration's using open source and open standards and governmental institutions that are making their data publicly available are two of the themes of this year's Open World Forum conference in Paris.

Commissioner Kroes: 'IT vendor dependence is a waste of public money' — published on Jun 14, 2010

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Public administrations should avoid being locked in by IT vendors, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said last week Thursday. "This is a waste of public money that public bodies can no longer afford."

Tool to validate metadata of EU's geographic information — published on Jun 08, 2010

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The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) just published it's Inspire Metadata Validator, a tool to check if metadata in geographic information conforms to Inspire's guidelines on metadata.

Advocates of open source and standards cautiously welcome ICT plan — published on May 20, 2010

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Advocacy groups on open standards and open source software cautiously welcome the European Commission's five year ICT plan.

Updates to EU-tools providing electronic data exchange on procurement — published on May 13, 2010

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The European Union's Directorate-General for Informatics (Digit) last month published an update to its Open e-Prior tool. The software manages the exchange with suppliers of information on procurement and invoices.

Cenatic: 'Using open source is key for e-government' — published on Apr 23, 2010

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Using open source is a key element for delivering electronic government services, argues Cenatic, Spain's national competence centre on open source. In a paper published on 5 April, the centre lists nine other reasons why public administrations should be using open source.

EU: open standards and interoperable systems for e-government — published on Apr 23, 2010

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EU governments should use open standards and interoperable systems to deliver electronic government services, EU ministers and the European Commission agreed earlier this week. They also stated they would promote the reuse of public sector information.

User survey: OSOR needs more promotion — published on Apr 15, 2010

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The visitors and users of the European Union's Open Source Observatory and Repository, OSOR.eu, want the project to do more to promote itself. That is one of the conclusions of a user survey by Gartner, a market-research firm, completed in February.

Tool to manage electronic petitions supports many languages — published on Mar 24, 2010

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A first version of an open source tool to help manage electronic petitions, ePetitions, was published on the OSOR last week. The project aims to develop a web application that offers support for e-petitions in many languages. The software was tried by the city council of the city of Bristal in the United Kingdom and the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames.

Groups in eleven EU member states participate in Document Freedom Day — published on Mar 23, 2010

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In at least eleven EU member states, groups promoting the use of open standards and open source software, are preparing for Document Freedom Day, 31 March. With workshops, presentations and demonstrations, they aim to make computer users aware of open formats for electronic documents. Many groups will focus on public administrations and governments.

ES: Valencia migrates three open source GIS tools to OSOR — published on Feb 11, 2010

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The ministry of infrastructure and transport in Valencia, one of Spain's autonomous regions, last week began migration of three of its open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications and projects to the European Union's Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR).

DK: Danish state administrations to use ODF — published on Jan 29, 2010

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The Danish parliament and the Danish minister for Science this morning agreed that the Danish state administrations should use open standards, including the Open Document Format (ODF), starting on 1 April 2011. A formal vote on the agreement is planned for next Tuesday.

Management tools for SMEs published as open source by Spain — published on Jan 29, 2010

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Comerzzia, tools that can help small and medium enterprises to manage their offices and points of sales, has just been released as open source by Centatic, the Spanish government's resource centre on open source and open standards.

German government publishes XML converter on the OSOR Forge — published on Jan 29, 2010

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Genericoder, an open source XML converter, has just been published by Germany's Bundesstelle für Informationstechnik (Federal Office for Information Technology) in Cologne. The application converts lists of csv code into XML files that are compliant to OASIS Genericode Version 1.0, but according to its developers can be adapted to carry out other transformations.