Brussels, 08/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - European administrations should share software on an open source licensing basis, to cut soaring eGoverment information technology costs (set to rise by 28% to € 6.6 billion this year), says an independent study published by the European Commission. The "Pooling Open Source Software" study, financed by the Commission's Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA) programme, recommends creating a clearing house to which administrations could "donate" software for re-use. This facility, which would concentrate on applications specific to the needs of the public sector, could encourage the replication of good practice in eGovernment services.
Although the study points out that software would probably need to be customised to local linguistic and legal requirements, sharing these eGovernment tools could lead to across-the-board improvements in efficiency of the European public sector. According to another report published in the European Information Technology Observatory, EU public sector expenditures on eGovernment are set to rise by 28% to € 6.6 billion this year. Pooling Open Source Software suggests that software developed for and owned by public administrations should be issued under an open source licence. It also recommends that a software pooling facility should provide quality guarantees and help resolve questions of liability that currently often inhibit the sharing of developments. A step-by-step implementation of the facility is however recommended, since sharing competence and good practices is more urgent than sharing software. More than simply providing software, the pooling facility should thus make available expertise and help create a community of developers, users and policy makers, providing opportunities for increased cooperation, notably in software development and testing. The study can be consulted on http: //europa.eu.int/ispo/ida.