All of Romania’s public administrations are to use open source and open standards software. The government is making this a (minute) part of the 2014-2020 Digital Agenda, made public in November. The approach will increase interoperability of ICT systems.

Open source and open standards is one of the 18 so-called Strategic Lines of Development - “action points that need to be followed and executed in meet the desired outcomes for the Digital Agenda for Romania.”

Use open source and open standards and provide open access to the applications purchased and implemented by public administrations, the ministry writes in the English translation of the National Strategy on Digital Agenda for Romania. “All public bodies will adhere to this Action Line”, it adds.

The concept of open source is also included in the introduction of the government plans on open government data - making data publicly available, accessible and reusable. “The final goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open hardware, open content, and open access”, the government explains in its strategy document. The freedoms associated with open source are also part in the Strategic Lines of Development for ICT in Education. Romania’s schools and universities should focus on the use of Open Educational Resources, defined as “open source digital content”.

Investigation

Romanian advocates of free and open source software doubt that the policy announcement will change much. According to them, many of the country’s public administrations are actively hindering competition when it comes to ICT solutions. They point to several corruption investigations over the past years involving public administrations and resellers of proprietary software licences.

On Sunday, Klaus Iohannis was sworn in as the country’s new president. In his campaign Iohannis vowed he would fight corruption. Iohannis’ campaign site is running Linux and Apache, two well-known open source solutions, as well as a number of open source web site programming tools, including the popular Jquery.

More information:

National Strategy on Digital Agenda for Romania