[Foss4g2008loc] FW: [OSGeo Africa] South African government free and open source software policy

[Gavin Fleming]

For those of you not on the Africa list, see the latest on SA's Open
Source policy.

 

Gavin

 

________________________________

From: africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Kate Lance
Sent: 10 October 2007 05:28 PM
To: OSGEO-Africa
Cc: SDI-Africa
Subject: [OSGeo Africa] South African government free and open
sourcesoftware policy

 

Can someone give me an indication of how the South African government
free and open source software policy affects (or will affect) geospatial
software procurement (and government supported software-development)?


If the policy does (or eventually will) extend to geospatial software,
then how will those making procurement decisions judge whether
proprietary software is "significantly superior" or not (has SITA
prepared criteria/guidelines for such evaluation)?

 

http://www.apc.org/english/rights/africa/?apc=he_1&x=5193463

South African government free and open source software policy

October 6, 2007: The Chief Technology Officer of the South African State
Information Technology Agency (SITA), announced the launch of the
government-wide free and open source programme at the GovTech conference
held early September. While many welcomed the February announcement of
government's intention to adopt and promote open source software, the
subsequent months saw disillusionment within the open source community
that very little had actually happened. Sita's Daniel Mashao addressed
these worries, describing what had been happening behind the scenes and
showing a systematic timetable of how this process will indeed be
implemented. He outlined the government's policy. The five key points
are: 1) Choose FOSS, 2) Migrate to FOSS, 3) Develop in FOSS, 4) Use
FOSS/open content licensing, and 5) Promote FOSS in South Africa. Under
the policy, when introducing new software, the SA government will
implement open source solutions unless a proprietary option is
demonstrated to be "significantly superior". In any instances where
proprietary software is implemented, reasons must be given to justify
its use. Migration of current systems is also planned. This will be done
in a phased approach, beginning with applications such as replacing MS
Office with Open Office or KOffice and replacing Internet Explorer with
Firefox. This will in time lead up to the operating system, replacing
Windows with a Linux distribution. Migration to Apache for the running
of government websites has already occurred within a number of
departments. All new software developed for or by the government is to
be based on open standards and licensed under an open source licence
where possible. 

 

See: Policy on Free and Open Source Software use for South African
Government - approved by Cabinet on 22 February 2007,
http://www.oss.gov.za/FOSS_OC_POLICY_2006.pdf
<http://www.oss.gov.za/FOSS_OC_POLICY_2006.pdf>
<http://www.oss.gov.za/> 

 

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