In OSOR, we hope to contribute through our case studies and country intelligence reports, among other activities. Our goal is to make people aware of what's going on in the rest of the EU so that the best ideas can be identified and connections can be made. Our latest case study is on the use of FOSS in Bratislava. The city has built their Bratislava ID digital identity tools and tax payment system with FOSS, and user acceptance indicates the work is a success. We've also published new country intelligence reports on Slovakia and Singapore, updating our previous work, along with shorter factsheets with highlights.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which assists the GDPR compliance of the EU Member States' data protection authorities (DPAs), has published a website auditing tool designed for data protection compliance checks. Released under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL), this tool aims to simplify the collection, analysis, and reporting of evidence related to website trackers to facilitate website inspections for legal and technical auditors at DPAs and for entities wishing to assess their own compliance.

In Finland, a series of six lectures on open source technologies have been made available for free online, with the hope of encouraging adoption of free and open source software within digital industries.

The Interoperable Europe Act (IEA), one of the few remaining pieces of EU digital regulation being worked on, has been approved by the European Parliament by a large majority. Many expect it to be adopted on first reading. The IEA is the latest in a long progression of EU legislative instruments on interoperability, but while there have been recommendations and assistance in the past, the IEA is the first act to introduce binding interoperability obligations. Specifically, the text mandates interoperability assessments for digital public services involving cross-border data exchange and that Union entities and public sector bodies should give priority to open source solutions “where such interoperability solutions are equivalent in terms of functionalities, total cost, user-centricity, cybersecurity or other relevant objective criteria.” This is the first such clause at the EU level and it sets a minimum. Local entities and individual public sector bodies may keep or introduce stronger clauses. The regulation also creates an Interoperable Europe Board which may invite experts from the open source community, and requires the European Commission to provide training on free and open source solutions. An overview of the IEA was presented at FOSDEM at the start of February.

FOSDEM was also the venue for a presentation from the European Commission's OSPO on the Commission's 2020-2023 open source strategy and the work on code.europa.eu, FOSSEPS, and FOSSEPS 2 during that period. The presentation also looked at what could be in the Commission's next open source strategy.

The OSOR Team too will take some time to think about the future. We look forward to working on it with you.

The OSOR Team