The government of Malta has started the Government of Malta Open Source End User Group (Moseug) last month. The group is meant to become a major driving force behind open source initiatives in the country.
According to an article on the new user group in the Times of Malta newspaper, written by Michel Bugeja, an IT architect at Malta's governmental Information Technology Agency (MITA), the government wants the group to help to increase the use of open source software in the government. "All stakeholders see the formation of the user group as a commitment from the government to promote open source software on equal play to proprietary software."
Moseug held its first meeting, on 30 April, to discuss the role of the group and to talk about the use of open source in public administration.
Participants included civil administrators from MITA, IT service providers, academics and representatives from the Malta open source community. Also present were Zeapartners, a network of companies involved in the open source content management system Plone and its applications server Zope. Zeapartners is closely involved with several European user groups of public administrations using Plone.
The next meeting of Moseug has not yet been planned, but it is expected to take place sometime this summer.
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