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    <title>European Free Software Policy Meeting 2017</title>
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<h1>European Free Software Policy Meeting 2017</h1>  

<p>Building on the experience from last year's <a href="/news/2016/news-20160205-01.en.html">successful 
pre-FOSDEM meeting</a>, the <a href="/index.en.html">Free 
Software Foundation Europe</a> and <a href="http://www.openforumeurope.org/">OpenForum Europe</a> recently 
continued the tradition of bringing together active Free Software groups 
a day before the FOSDEM event, in order to discuss public policy related 
actions at both the EU and the national levels. This year, the meeting 
focused on encouraging exchanges of views between individual citizens 
and decision-makers, by providing practical first-hand information on topics 
relating to Free Software in public policy.</p>

<p>The session started with Sebastian Raible (parliamentary assistant to 
Julia Reda (a Member of the European Parliament)), who gave a <a href="http://raible.org/presentations/2017-02-03_FOSSA_Pre-FOSDEM-Meetup/#1">presentation 
about Free Software developments from the perspective of the European Parliament</a>. He explained 
the progress of the <a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eu-fossa/description">Free and Open Source Software Audit (or FOSSA) programme</a>, which 
was extended for another three years at the end of 2016, and explained 
that one of the main changes to the programme is that now it includes a 
new “bug bounty” incentive scheme, rewarding the discovery and reporting 
of new software bugs. Participants highlighted their concerns over the 
methodology of FOSSA, and the need to focus on its aim, namely, support 
for the security of the Free Software projects.</p>

<p>Next, Pierre Damas (Head of Sector, Digital Services at the Directorate 
General of Information Technologies of the European Commission) shared 
with the group some of the <a href="http://www.openforumeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/EC-Open-Source-Strategy-OFE-PRE-FOSDEM-1.pdf">Commission's plans</a> for 
updating its <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/european-commissions-open-source-strategy_en">Open Source Software Strategy</a>, identifying 
the key barriers and motivations for adopting it in practice. According 
to Pierre Damas, although within the Commission Free Software is technically now 
treated equally with its proprietary counterparts, there remains a lack 
of political will to back up the mainstream adoption of Free Software technologies 
within the EU institutions. According to him, the next step for the updated 
Open Source Strategy in the Commission is the "digital transformation" of 
areas such as "cloud", big data, and the "Internet of Things".</p>


<div class="captioned left" style="max-width: 650px; width: 53%">
<a href="/graphics/2017-policy-meeting.jpg">
<img src="/graphics/2017-policy-meeting.jpg" alt="Policy meeting" width="100%"/>
</a>
</div>


<p>Jaana Sahk-Labi (from the Estonian Permanent Representation to the EU) <a href="http://www.openforumeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/presentation-pre-FOSDEM-03022017-1.pdf">presented 
Estonia's national framework for supporting the implementation of Free Software</a>. Estonia is 
considered to be the leader in e-Government at the EU level, and is planning 
to highlight e-Government topics during its presidency of the Council of 
the EU, in the second half of 2017. One of the main challenges for the 
Estonian government in the upcoming presidency will be the right approach 
for future-proofing "no legacy" policies that continue after the term of 
Estonia's presidency has come to an end. Consequently, Estonia is preaching 
for a digital revolution in the EU institutions.</p>

<p>Laurent Joubert (from the French government) <a href="http://www.openforumeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/PGO_FOSS-contribution-policy-43-1.pdf">presented 
the Open Source Contribution Policy Template</a> which has been drafted 
by numerous representatives from governments, non-governmental 
organisations, companies, international organisations and academic sector 
as a part of the <a href="https://paris-declaration.ogpsummit.org/topic/5820e48c2fd812b46ab9facc">Open 
Government Partnership</a>. The aim of this template is to provide an easily 
shareable and ready-to-use template for governments – as well as other 
public administrations - to set up a policy for code contributions made 
by civil servants, which have to be open by default. The ultimate goal of 
such a policy is to facilitate, share and reuse the code developed by and 
for public administrations.</p>

<p>The speakers' presentations were followed by a round table discussion, engaging 
the participants in considering the possibility creating a dashboard, which 
would serve as a tool for advocacy groups to assess best practices and 
policies for supporting Free Software and Open Standards (OS) in Member States. Part 
of the discussion was dedicated to finding ways to evaluate the existing 
national or regional policies which support Free Software. A couple of identified 
indicators of "openness" were: the level of Free Software usage; and the fact of 
using global analytics of online procedures. In addition, certain other 
criteria will also need to be taken into account: transparency of how Free Software 
is adopted in the public sector; the implementation of the policy in practice; and 
product maturity. The participants agreed to start working on listing the 
parameters which would describe "best behaviour" on the part of government, with 
a view to developing concrete steps or actions to support governments to 
achieve this.</p>

<p>The meeting was a stepping-stone, paving the way for a bigger collaboration 
on how to promote public policies supporting Free Software across Europe. We hope to continue 
the collaboration and to coordinate our actions in order to collectively 
make a difference on the policy level.</p>

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<tags>
        <tag key="front-page"/>
        <tag key="policy">Policy</tag>
        <tag key="openstandards">Open Standards</tag>
        <tag key="europeancommission">European Commission</tag>
        <tag contet="European Parliament">EuropeanParliament</tag>
        <tag key="publicadministration">Public Administration</tag>
    </tags>

<author id="malaja"/>
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