Italy

IT: Municipality of Modena removing vendor dependency office tools — published on Aug 24, 2010

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The Italian municipality of Modena is well on its way to become independent from a major IT vendor for its office productivity tools, reports Laura Seidenari, instructor at the city's IT department.

IT: Bolzano region begins discussion on open source strategy — published on Jul 07, 2010

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The administration of the Bolzano region in Italy will discuss its IT strategy with advocates of free and open source. The director of the IT department has accepted an invitation by the regional Linux user group (Lugbz) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).

IT: Bolzano facing protests over licence deal forced by vendor lock-in — published on May 28, 2010

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The decision on Tuesday by the administration of the Bolzano region to renew the proprietary software licences for its servers, will be challenged by Associazione per il Software Libero (Assoli), an advocacy group on free and open source. The group says the region should have investigated alternatives and should have issued a call for tender.

IT: Children hospitals saving money by using open source — published on Apr 21, 2010

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Italian children hospitals are saving money by using the 'Smart Inclusion project' using open source technology and offering access to for instance medical data and e-learning applications. According to a statement from the Ministry for Public Administration and Innovation, hospitals can save about 1000 Euro per PC and about 500 per thin client.

Italy to begin an open source competence centre — published on Apr 21, 2010

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Italian public administrations considering to use open source can turn to a competence centre specialised in this type of software. The web-based centre, which will be opened tomorrow, aims to foster the development and adoption of open source software.

IT: Constitutional court says administrations can favour open source — published on Mar 30, 2010

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Public administrations in Italy may make laws that favour their use of free and open source over proprietary alternatives, according to Italy's Constitutional Court in a ruling published last week Tuesday.

IT: Public administration's portal builder adds business intelligence — published on Jan 28, 2010

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The Java Agile Portal System (jAPS 2.0), open source software designed to help Italy's public administration's build specialised websites, is about to get boosted with open source business intelligence (BI) options.

Bologna achieves vendor independence for its office applications — published on Dec 03, 2009

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The administration of the Italian city of Bologna has almost completed its move to OpenOffice. Most of the 3600 PCs now run this open source suite of office applications. The administration is planning to move more applications to open source, aiming to become less dependent on specific IT vendors.

IT: 'Open source key to software re-use of public administrations' — published on Nov 18, 2009

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"Free and open source software enables more effective actions, with a very low cost, when financing small projects for public administrations", says Osvaldo Gervasi, president of Umbria's Open Source Competence Center (CCOS) and professor of Computer Science at University of Perugia. "This type of software is key to the re-use of applications by public administrations."

European governments help increase ODF interoperability — published on Nov 17, 2009

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Representatives from three European member states, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, took part in the second Open Document Format (ODF) interoperability workshop held in the Italian town of Orvieto at the beginning of this month.

IT: Open source GIS Tuscany for government, libraries and health care — published on Oct 30, 2009

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The administration of the Tuscany region in Italy this month published a new version of Sagadb, an open source Geographic Information System (GIS) application.

IT: University of Verona moving to open source desktop — published on Aug 06, 2009

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The University of Verona in Italy started a three year program last January to migrate most of its more than 4000 PCs to open source. It is likely that the university will switch its PCs to GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu.

IT: Italian government to increase use of open source in schools — published on Jun 26, 2009

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The Italian government wants to increase the use of open source in schools. The Italian Ministry of Public Administration and Innovation, Renato Brunetta earlier this week announced two pilot projects in school in Rome.

IT: Youth department city of Modena organises open source classes — published on Jun 04, 2009

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The youth department of the public administration of the city of Modena is promoting school students' use of open source software. The department is working with a local training institute, which will start courses on open source this autumn, a local news web site reports.

IT: Statistics institute: moving to open source increases cooperation — published on May 25, 2009

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Moving to open source leads to increased cooperation between public administrations, says Carlo Vaccari, manager of software development at Italy's National Institute of Statistics, Istat.

IT: City of Trento moving to open source IP telephony — published on May 20, 2009

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The administration of the Italian city of Trento is moving to an open source voice over IP (VOIP) telephone system based on Asterisk.

IT: Plonegov Italy officially launched — published on May 15, 2009

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The Italian chapter of Plonegov, an international project to develop open source e-government applications using the Plone open source content management system, was launched officially today at a conference in Sorrento, in southern Italy.

IT: Democrats want public administrations to favour open source — published on Apr 22, 2009

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Two parliament members of the Italian Democratic Party want Italy's public bodies to favour free software. By 2012 all IT systems should be based on such software, MPs Vincenzo Vita and Luigi Vimercati proposed in a bill last month.

IT: Small open source grants involve public bodies and schools — published on Apr 09, 2009

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Small grants can jump-start open source development projects that are useful for public administrations and schools and universities, a grant program in Italy's Umbria region shows.

IT: Head of IT Venice region: 'Open source wherever appropriate' — published on Mar 17, 2009

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"Open source applications needs to be used wherever appropriate, according to our regional law on information technology pluralism", said Bruno Salomoni, head of the IT department at the administration of the Veneto region in Italy, at a conference last week. He called on local public bodies to investigate how much of their software development may be reusable by other public administrations.