The European Parliament's Directorate General for Innovation and Technological Support is to produce report on the EP's free and open source software programmes. MEP Bart Staes (Group of the Green and European Free Alliance) on 10 May added this as a requirement for the discharge of the EP's 2010 budget committee.

In his request, Staes writes that he 'expects a full report on the parliaments free software projects'. Staes also wants the EP's IT department to check if its software choices reflect the parliament's obligation to conduct its activities with the utmost transparency.

Looking not just at its own implementations of open source, the EP earlier, on 12 April, adopted a resolution on eGovernment. This resolution welcomes the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015, the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) and the European Interoperability Framework (EIF).

The EIS provides a basis for the organisational, financial and operational support of interoperability of Europe's e-government services. The EIF next provides guidance on the design and requirements of interoperability. One of the recommendations is that public administrations share and re-use software solutions.

In their resolution the EP calls on the Member States to rapidly align their strategies with the EIS and EIF.

In the same text, the parliamentarians ask the EU countries and the EC to make available their publicly funded data in machine-readable form 'under open licences'.

They also request the EU members to develop 'open educational software'. They want the member states to "exchange best practices, and to develop online platforms for collaboration on educational materials and resources that are free for students and take due account of data protection and copyright rules."



More information:

Texts adopted on 10 May 2012

2010 budget discharge

EP resolution on a competititive digital single market

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