The Swedish government’s national procurement services department (Avropa) is referring to the EU’s 2017 Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment (also known as the “Tallinn Declaration”) to motivate public services to use open IT standards and open source software.
The first framework procurement agreement of the new type, for public services involved in health care, social security, and schools, will be available from 1 January 2019.
The (Tallinn Declaration) was signed by all 28 EU Member States and four EFTA countries a year ago in Tallinn, Estonia. It sets out objectives for the next five years (2018–2022).
Open source improves interoperability, the signatories agree, and they promise to make more use of open source and open standards to avoid IT vendor lock-in. In addition, all 32 countries state that they will make their ICT solutions available for reuse by others.
Sweden's national procurement services department is one of the first European public services to use the Tallinn declaration to encourage public sector organisations to use open source and open standards. “The procurement agency wishes to emphasise to the tenderer that all parts of the procurement documents may contain requirements, criteria or conditions to ensure that the public sector is able to obtain software and services that enable sharing and reuse, and that avoid lock-in,” the agency writes.
The procurement service will be adding this or very similar sections to many future framework agreements.
The framework agreements make it easy for public services to acquire IT solutions. The agency pre-selects suitable IT service providers, getting their agreement on the legal terms that fit the public sector.
Comments
Link to the declaration does not work.
Hi Pierre! Thanks for catching that.
The URL accidentally took the closing brace ) . It's fixed.