Open procurement – by the rules or bend the rules

Description

Open source has become a widely accepted model to create, produce and maintain all kind of IT solutions – from single and simple programs to large scale enterprise solutions. What practical steps should be taken to gain wider footstep for open tools and solutions on on public sector’s IT?

Welcoming words

Markku Raitio, IT Director, City of Helsinki

Open Systems and Solutions – there are diffrent values in it

Ilkka Lehtinen, Managing Director, COSS

Free Software in the public sector: Getting it right & getting value

Karsten Gerloff, President, Free Software Foundation

Free Software offers great value for the public sector, both in the short and the long term. Public sector organisations gain vendor independence and negotiating power, and can save substantial amounts of taxpayers’ money.

We will discuss how the public sector can best make use of Free Software, how to overcome typical challenges, and how to use Free Software to stimulate the local economy. Public bodies that are moving towards Free Software will need to adapt their procurement practices. This means breaking out of cozy (and costly) relationships, making an effort to play by the rules, and learning to take advantage of the competition on the open market. Migrations need to be carefully planned and executed, with a special focus on engaging staff. Experience shows that it’s important to secure political backing for the effort, as proprietary vendors will try to make the process difficult.

With a few simple steps, the state can leverage the advantages of Free Software to make the public sector more efficient. Open Standards take care of interoperability issues. Releasing publicly funded software stimulates local industry, as a healthy dose of competition brings down prices.

UK public sector and open source: Quite a lot of talking how much walking?

Gerry Gavigan, Chair,Open Source Consortium

Bios

Markku Raitio, IT Director, City of Helsinki

Information and communication technology strategy, coordination and supervision of the development of ICT policies.

Ilkka Lehtinen, Managing Director, COSS ry - The Finnish Centre for Open Systems and Solutions

Ilkka has over 20 years experience on IT industry. Serving on public sector, being entrepreneur, serving on public company and smaller business. IT-services, development, deployment and sales has been his career. From late 90′s Ilkka has been a strong believer on open source and its phenomena. That is why he really enjoys his watchtower position on European open source business.

Karsten Gerloff, President, Free Software Foundation Europe

Karsten Gerloff is the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. FSFE’s mission as an independent not-for-profit organisation is promoting freedom in the information society through Free Software. Gerloff leads FSFE’s participation in community and policy processes at the European and global level, and is a frequent speaker at a wide variety of conferences and events. Karsten Gerloff has conducted extensive research on the economic and social effects of Free Software for the European Commission and other clients, and has led the development of training materials for Free Software entrepreneurs in Southern and Eastern Africa. http://fsfe.org/about/gerloff/gerloff.en.html

Gerry Gavigan, Chair, Open Source Consortium

Gerry Gavigan is chair of the Open Source Consortium, a UK trade association/advocacy group. He has been involved with OSC since before its reincarnation as a membership controlled organisation in 2008 and its chair for nearly four years. He’s been using a Linux distro as his only desktop since 1999 and been involved in developing industrial applications deploying open source software. He is the author of an extensive study on open standards and open source source software available to download from the OSC website.

Session Host

Ilkka Lehtinen, Managing Director, COSS ry - The Finnish Centre for Open Systems and Solutions

Ilkka has over 20 years experience on IT industry. Serving on public sector, being entrepreneur, serving on public company and smaller business. IT-services, development, deployment and sales has been his career. From late 90′s Ilkka has been a strong believer on open source and its phenomena. That is why he really enjoys his watchtower position on European open source business.