Listening to TWIG today I was reminded of my reputation online, and I start looking for my links on Google and saw many sites outdated with my name on it. So I decided to update as much as possible and also refresh some of my public pictures online.
e-Government, Open Government, and Government Web 2.0
I think that the rules apply to the virtual world resembles the traditional world, regardless of which is very different.
Malaga day 2
Just got to the event in Malaga and the night was a bit busy but finally got a healthy 5 hours of sleep. After that I came downstairs to get some breakfast and started recognizitng someof the faces at the event. between these faces there was many of the spaniard community including Juan Tomas, Rodrigo Salvador from Andalucia and Claudio Filho from the Brazilian OpenOffice.org community.The first event was the e-procurement process on OSOR for e-procurement. OSOR seems to be an evolution of the Open source software usage in Europe. These are guidelines maninly that we can use open source on the government level.These talk seem interesting and something that would be very good to have expanded to other governmental systems in US and Latinamerica.These talk is mainly a workshop which means that is not only a talk but an activity about how to paritcipate on these procurements. So my interaction with the system proves to be something more important on leveraging with it. Something particulary important for producitivity products like OpenOffice.org.Their main point is to get a good positioning on the government environments to get open source ready to do business with them. Neatherland seems to have the lead o the OSOSS procurement guidelines followed by France and Italy and Denmark. The Dutch guidelines have a better legal background than the other two. Theres is also a difference between guidelines as a recomendationand not an official policy to follow up.The preference or software is based 39% for Interoperability and 33% for compatibility and 8% don’t know.The brand recognizition versus the actual functionality most of the procurement are very brand based as opposed to function based. The top 10 software vendors found were:Microsoft 36%Oracle 20%IBM 12%SAP 11%Adobe 10%Good practices is another strong process on these guidelines such as non-discrimination and equal treatment and other good tools like transparency. However this goes back to what Microsoft has preached in the past but certainly there are more things to be aware like the freedom in them.Differences between licenses, service and support and the payment model that we need. The technical requirements and the future use on software modification. Documents and standards are key here because there should be awareness as well as internal applications that can work with them.There is a good point in the way governments use open source/free software such as payments and tools that doesn’t need to be procure actively. This hits straight in the face of what is defined as shadow IT. Knowledge on how to manage these hability without falling into shadow IT. The other challenge is the tender that needs to be procured through IT services.Another thing is the way to handle donations, what guidelines should government follow to be an active participant of FLOSS projects.Legality and legal frameworks are important since FLOSS has little knowledge of it. Yet the way we can advanced is basically through brands.
Trip to Malaga
In a few days I will be going to Malaga, Spain for the Open Source World Conference. The event promise to have many resources and be with the ‘creame’ of the open source sphere. Including a presentation from Jim O’Reilly keynote, many presentations and panels from around the world. I notice that there are many governments including Uruguay, many regions of Spain and Europe.Personally I need to buy lots of new clothes and get some cables for the event also an extra battery for my N800 and other things. Also I just got a 4GB SD which is great because cost only $25 bucks.I am looking forward for the programme getting updated with my Open for Business talk. So hopefully after I sent my presentation they will get me on the plan with all the glamour and glitz. Let see how it goes.
Ideas, thoughts and Free Software 