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    <title>32 European ministers call for more Free Software in governmental infrastructure</title>
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  <h1>32 European ministers call for more Free Software in governmental infrastructure</h1>
  
  <p>On 6 October, 32 European Ministers in charge of eGovernment 
  policy signed the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment that calls for more 
  collaboration, interoperable solutions, and sharing of good practices 
  throughout public administrations and across borders. Amongst other things, 
  the EU ministers recognised the need to make more use of Free Software 
  solutions and Open Standards when (re)building governmental digital 
  systems with EU funds.</p>
  
  <p>The <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/document.cfm?doc_id=47559">Tallinn Declaration</a>, 
  lead by the Estonian EU presidency, has been adopted on 6 October 2017. 
  It is a ministerial declaration that marks a new political commitment 
  at European Union (EU) and  European Free Trade Area (EFTA) level on 
  priorities to ensure user-centric digital public services for both citizens 
  and businesses cross-border. While having no legislative power, the ministerial 
  declaration marks a political commitment to ensure the digital transformation 
  of public administrations through a set of commonly agreed principles 
  and actions.</p>

  <p>The FSFE has previously submitted its <a href="/news/2017/news-20170710-01.html">input 
  for the aforementioned declaration</a> during the public consultation 
  round, asking for greater inclusion of Free Software in delivering truly 
  inclusive, trustworthy and interoperable digital services to all citizens 
  and businesses across the EU.</p>
  
  <p>The adopted Tallinn Declaration proves to be a forward-looking document 
  that acknowledges the importance of Free Software in order to ensure the 
  principle of 'interoperability by default', and expresses the will of 
  all signed EU countries to:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
	  <p>"make more use of open source solutions and/or open standards when 
	  (re)building ICT systems and solutions (among else, to avoid vendor 
	  lock-ins)[...]"</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Additionally, the signatories call upon the European Commission to:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
	  <p>"consider strengthening the requirements for use of open source 
	  solutions and standards when (re)building of ICT systems and solutions 
	  takes place with EU funding, including by an appropriate open 
	  licence policy – by 2020."</p>
  </blockquote>

  <p>The last point is especially noteworthy, as it explicitly calls for 
  the European Commission to make use of Free Software and Open Standards 
  in building their ICT infrastructure with EU funds, which is in line with 
  our <a href="https://publiccode.eu">"Public Money, Public Code" campaign</a>
  that is targeted at the demand for all publicly financed software developed 
  for the public sector to be publicly made available under Free Software licences.</p>
  
  <div class="captioned" style="width:80%; margin: 1.5em auto;"><a href="https://publiccode.eu">
				<img src="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/big/bb586c15dbff7cd1b31e877108084a2e.png" alt="Public Money Public Code - quote" /></a>
			</div>

  <h2>What's next?</h2>
  
  <p>The Tallinn Declaration sets several deadlines for its implementation 
  in the next few years: with the annual presentation on the progress of 
  implementation of the declaration in the respective countries across 
  the EU and EFTA through the eGovernment Action Plan Steering Board. 
  The signatories also called upon the Austrian Presidency of the Council 
  of the EU to evaluate the implementation of the Tallinn Declaration in 
  autumn 2018.</p>
  
  <blockquote>
  <p>"The Declaration expresses the political will of the EU and 
  EFTA countries to digitise their governments in the most user-friendly 
  and efficient way. The fact that it explicitly recognises the role of 
  Free Software and Open Standards for a trustworthy, transparent and open 
  eGovernment on a high level, along with a demand for strengthened reuse 
  of ICT solutions based on Free Software in the EU public sector, is a 
  valuable step forward to establishing a <a href="https://publiccode.eu">"Public Money, Public Code"</a>
  reality across Europe",  says Polina Malaja, the FSFE's policy analyst.</p>
  </blockquote>


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  <tags>
      <tag key="front-page"/>
      <tag key="policy">policy</tag>
      <tag key="pmpc">Public Code</tag>
      <tag key="openstandards">OpenStandards</tag>
      <tag key="digitalinfrastructure">Digital infrastructure</tag>
  </tags>

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