The panels of the day then dug into the needs and the best practices of the community, for both open source and for the Interoperable Europe Act, with presentations and interventions from staff and elected officials from the city administrations of Barcelona and Paris, from the Bulgarian Parliament, from France's Interministerial Digital Directorate, and experts from the private sector and academia. The video recording of the full day is highly recommended. Brief details about the award winners are already online in a post from the event, as well as in the pre-event announcement of BlueHats' winning the Community Award.  

Continuing on from last month's news, open source AI is again making headlines with announcements of funding for both Aleph Alpha, in Germany, and Poro, in Finland. Discussions to define open source AI are ongoing. 

The E-Governance Agency of Moldova's public administration has launched OpenCode.md to promote free and open source (FOSS) projects that meet a set of quality criteria which include respecting user privacy, not having closed source dependencies, and having clear ownership. Besides software, the portal also makes available open data and open content, with clear licence criteria. 

Slovenia's Ministry of Public Administration has co-financed the development of Na-prostem.si, “Free software for the digital inclusion of NGOs and its users”. The platform provides news and information about verified FOSS solutions and services. The budget also covers training in the use of FOSS. 

We have three updates on FOSS strategies being developed in both public and private sectors. The Netherlands has published its Digital Open Strategic Autonomy and Deutsche Bahn published its Open Source Manifesto. The Netherlands' strategy document contains the interesting note that investment is required if the productivity tools of the FOSS ecosystem - word processors, spreadsheets, etc. - are to offer a similar level of features compared to the online software of large, non-EU companies. The third item, from the United Nations, is on the publication of the report from the OSPOs for Good conference, which linked the work of OSPOs to the UN sustainable development goals. 

Our final item for this month is the news that funding has been approved in the EU budget 2024 for the continuation of the FOSSEPS project - "Free and Open Source Software within European Public Services". Among other things, FOSSEPS will be working on a FOSS catalogue, cybersecurity, and strategies for the reuse of FOSS developed for public services. FOSSEPS thus advances from being a “Pilot Project” to being a “Preparatory Action”.

We hope you’ve enjoyed OSOR’s activities from November, and we look forward to compiling the last newsletter of 2023 next month.

The OSOR Team