SI: Social Democrats want government to switch to open source
The Social Democrat Party of Slovenia wants the government to move the public administration's IT systems to open source. Three members of Parliament, Luka Juri, Dejan Levanič and Matevž Frangež, say that moving away from proprietary systems will help the government to save money.
The three parliamentarians estimate that for example moving the IT systems in the national assembly to open source will cut spending on software licenses by more than half a million euro per year.
Luka Juri, in an interview with the public news agency RTV published a month ago, explains a gradual switch should not be difficult. First the proprietary browser would be replaced by Firefox. Next Microsoft Office would be substituted by OpenOffice and lastly the proprietary operating system could be replaced by GNU/Linux.
The three Social Democrats sent their plans to the prime minister and several ministers, such as the minister of Public Administration and the minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology. They want schools, colleges and universities to also start using open source software instead of proprietary applications.
The Slovenian Open Source Centre (COKS), earlier this week announced it would support such a move. The centre, founded by several Slovenian universities, schools and number of open source IT services firms and sponsored by the government, said it had offered its services to the national assembly and to the minister of Higher Education. "We hope this will result in the Slovenian government increasing its use of open source."
According to Andrej Kositer, the coordinator of COKS, the three MPs are now trying to get their colleagues to support their plans. "We will be meeting them soon to discuss further steps."
The three MPs were not immediately able to respond to questions.
RTV Slovenia news item (in Slovenian)
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