The government of Aragon, one of Spain's autonomous regions, is increasing its support for open source, by making it easier for companies to get assistance to create, acquire and deploy this type of applications. It will link public administrations and other enterprises with open source specialists.

The region's administration last week Wednesday signed a cooperation agreement with Cenatic, the Spanish government resource centre on open source and with Cesla, a trade group representing open source IT service providers in the region.

The three organisations want to strengthen the community of open source companies, boost their competitiveness and increase awareness among public administrations and other companies. "Open source has shown to be of greater technological efficiency in both public and private sector", Cenatic quotes the administration, in a statement published last week.

The goal is to create business opportunities for the open source IT companies in Aragon. The three expect that this will result in jobs and increasing wealth.



Budget efficiency

Cenatic quotes Aragon's head of the department for New Technology, Maria Angeles Rincón, who at the ceremony said that "the commitment of Aragon for free software is an instrument for budget efficiency and interoperability, and for facilitating the sharing of solutions between administrations."

The director of Cenatic, Miguel Jaque, said: "Free software has become the great ally of those seeking maximum budget efficiency in technology. Regional governments such as Aragon, are working to maximize these benefits."



More information:

statement by Cenatic (in Spanish)

Computing news item (in Spanish)

Cesla