FLOSS News

Remember when, back in late February, the Cabinet Office released their “Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan”? Myself and many other FOSS commentators were obviously heartily encouraged and have talked about it and examined the policy in some detail.

As anyone interested in the politics and wider adoption of FOSS will know by now, the Government recently released an updated policy statement regarding “Open Source and Open Standards”. I made a brief comment on it when the news broke, but have now had more time to consider the document and air my thoughts on it.

Firstly, It’s quite minor but nevertheless a shame that the pdf document was issued using Arial and Times New Roman embedded fonts that are not available on a free license. This leads me nicely to my second general point.

I found this on my Google News reader this morning.

Australia’s open source community leaders have written an open letter to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling for consideration of free and open source software in the implementation of the Digital Education Revolution for the National Secondary School Computer Fund.

The letter, signed by 10 local open source professionals, calls for greater use of free and open source software in schools, particularly with the election promise of $1000 to fund a computer for every secondary student in the country.

Next week, we’ll be exhibiting at BETT, “the world’s largest educational technology event” in Olympia, London from the 14th to the 17th January.

On our stand (SW104) “The Open Source Precinct” with our friends at the OpenForum Europe we will be:

Thanks to Andy Updegrove for bringing this to our attention.

CONSEGI 2008 DECLARATION

A new series of three publications recommends roadmap for e-government interoperability, baseed on flexible, universally compatible technologies for good governance and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

This APDIP e-Note intends to give a brief introduction to government interoperability frameworks (GIFs), explain how they are classified and provide details of their common features. It also discusses the importance of open standards in GIFs and why governments should consider open standards seriously when designing or evaluating their GIFs.

BEIJING, 20 April 2007 - United Nations Development Programme – Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP), in partnership with IBM and Oracle held the Government Interoperability Frameworks (GIF) Workshop and Study Group Meeting at the Beijing International Hotel on 18-20 April 2007. The event was hosted by the Chinese Government’s State Council Informatization Office (SCITO).

BANGKOK, 19 December 2006 - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), IBM and Oracle today announced a joint research initiative to help Asia-Pacific countries share and create strategies, blueprints and policies for adopting the right blend of open standards and technology services. The goal will be for more countries to develop universally compatible applications and networks to make internal and external government services and transactions more automatic, affordable and efficient.

Monday, 12 February 2007. Dr. Emmanuel C. Lallana, former Commissioner of the Philippines Commission on Information and Communications Technology joined UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) as Project Adviser of the Government Interoperability Frameworks (GIFs) Project.

The Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems is a user-friendly guide for policy makers and technologists offerings tools for understanding, creating, and sustaining open information and communication technologies ecosystems. Inside the guide you will find: core principles for openness; best practices and case studies; practical policy guidelines; and an Openness Maturity Model.

National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), in cooperation with Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA), Ministry of Information and Communication Technology; IBM (Thailand); Intel (Thailand); Oracle (Thailand); Cisco (Thailand), and APDIP, organized a Regional Conference on Open Standards: The Key to an Open ICT Ecosystem, on 2-4 May 2006, at the Sofitel Central Plaza Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand.