Governments can share and reuse their data and services only when their IT is open, says Peter Strickx, Director-General Architecture, Standards & Support at Fedict, Belgium's federal IT service. Sharing and reuse of data and services may be higher on political agendas: "But how can you share if the IT is not open?"

The Fedict CIO Strickx was one of the speakers at the OpenForum Europe Summit that took place in Brussels this week Tuesday. "Government workers need to be aware that open IT is fundamental. Like the foundation of a house is critical for its stability, open IT allows governments to offer value to citizens and enterprises."

Moreover, open IT system enables interoperability, allows sharing and reuse and, adds Strickx: "its exit costs are way lower".

This explains why all software that is custom built for Fedict is made available as open source. The development principle results in some unexpected beneficial side-effects, Strickx said. "For example we work with the Portuguese government, that is using our open source eID-software."

Building software solutions on this type of software saves governments resources. To make his point, Strickx offers an example of the exact opposite, showing how public resources are wasted because administrations are not collaborating. "A decade ago the Walloon government was forced to build their own software solution, doing their own IT procurement for a messaging system, because Flemish politicians did not allow them to re-use the federal system. And in return, Walloon politicians objected when the Flemish government, having failed to build their messaging system, also wanted to turn to the software built by the central government."

Strickx finds the use of open standards crucial for public administrations, adding that open source is not always a good solution since not all public administrations have the organisational structure in place to successfully use and support it. "This type of software requires governments to work with communities of developers. It does not have as clear a business case for them as do open data and open standards."

More information:
OpenForum Europe Summit