European Union (EU) Joinup Web Site

I have been following Gijs Hillenius for the past year on several social media and news sites. He is a journalist with over 25 years of experience and is currently the news editor of the Open Source Repository & Observatory (OSOR). The focus of many of his posts is on the use of open source and open standards by national, regional, and local governments across the European Union (EU).

Most of Gijs posts appear on the EU Joinup web site. Joinup is a collaborative platform created by the European Commission offering several services that aim to help e-Government professionals share their experience with interoperability  and open source solutions.

Joinup involves interoperability professionals from all over Europe. However, professionals from other countries outside the EU are also welcome to join. If you haven't already visited the site – check it out!

A sample of some of the most recent news items posted by Gijs on the Joinup web site over this past month include:

• 'Greek government must resolutely promote open source use'  -  The Greek government should more assertively push for the use of free and open source solutions in public administrations, urges Eel/lak, a Greek network of academic proponents of open source, in ...
• Vienna Medical University IT strongly relies on open source  -  The Medical University of Vienna, Austria, relies on free and open source software for its IT infrastructure, and is expanding the use of this kind of solutions into educational ICT areas ...
• Munich distributes Linux CDs  -  This week's Monday, the administration of the German city of Munich started to distribute Linux-installation CDs. The city's citizens can pick up a free 'Linux für Münich' ...
• Open source group: Basque Region to save 14 million per year  -  By using free and open source software, public administrations in Spain's Basque Region can save up to 14 million euro per year, according to a report by the trade group Euskadi Association ...
• UK's Geological Survey contributes to open source GIS tools  -  The UK Natural Environment Research Council's British Geological Survey is one of the EU public authorities contributing improvements and other code pieces to Geonetwork, an open source ...
• Danish school to switch to open source-based cloud PCs  -  The Danish town of Ballerup this autumn wants to switch students and teachers to cloud-based PCs. This includes moving the school to using online applications, according to a report ...
• Belgian rail relies on open source for monitoring IT system  -  The Belgian railways, a government-owned corporation, is relying on a plethora of free and open source to keep tabs on its large-scale IT system. They provide the railways with flexible and powerful ...

I look forward to more news updates by Gijs Hillenius on the state of open source in the EU.  Visit the EU Joinup news web site and let us know what you think about the remarkable changes taking place in Europe as more and more government agencies switch to the use of high quality, low cost open source solutions.