OSOR Guidelines: suggested model texts for the inclusion of standards and technical specifications in procurement tenders

Country

EU

Organisation

IDABC: Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to Public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens

Short Description

This is not a general purpose guide for procurement of software. These guidelines are specifically designed in order to clearly and simply explain how and why public agencies can acquire open source. These guidelines draw on the extensive legal analysis conducted by the Dutch government's OSOSS programme resulting in the publication of their Open Standards Manual and Open-Source Software in tenders: Open standards and open-source software and tendering rules in 2005. This was followed by a further practical guide published in 2007 by NOiV, the successor organisation to the OSOSS programme.

The main part of these guidelines are intended for a broad readership. They are intended to provide practical guidance to policy makers, IT managers and procurement officials at the level of national, regional and local government. They are therefore intended to be readable, without too many legal technicalities, and (relatively) short.

Internal links and documents

The guidelines:

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/document/guideline-public-administrations-procurement-and-open-source-software-updated-june-2010