European Union (EU)
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Open Source To Be The Norm In German Public Procurement
On 8 December 2021 a coalition of SPD (Social Democratic Party, the Greens (Alliance 90 / The Greens) and Liberals (Free Democratic Party) took office after obtaining a majority in the 26 September federal elections. With the new government comes a renewed commitment to digitalisation of not only the public sector but society and economy at large...In the final coalition agreement open source software plays an important role. It is considered in a digital sovereignty and pan-European context, as a way to bring progress to digital infrastructure and government services. Interoperability, data portability, open standards and open source are all named as prerequisites to achieve digital sovereignty.
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OpenID Connect May Usher In A New Era Of Federated Online Identity
OpenID Connect is designed to replace username/password authentication. The protocol, in use by Google and others, may solve governments' needs to authenticate users accessing digital services...
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Over 60% Of Breads Sold In The UK Contain Pesticide Residues, Tests Show
Two in every three loaves of bread sold in the UK contain pesticide residues, according to a new analysis of government data by environmental campaigners. Tests on hundreds of loaves also showed that 25% contained residues of more than one pesticide...
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Peer into the Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance
Aout 4 million years ago, a cave was forming in the Delaware Basin of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. From that time on, Lechuguilla Cave remained untouched by humans or animals until its discovery in 1986—an isolated, pristine primeval ecosystem. When the bacteria found on the walls of Lechuguilla were analyzed, many of the microbes were determined not only to have resistance to natural antibiotics like penicillin, but also to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the second half of the twentieth century...
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Peer into the Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance
Aout 4 million years ago, a cave was forming in the Delaware Basin of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. From that time on, Lechuguilla Cave remained untouched by humans or animals until its discovery in 1986—an isolated, pristine primeval ecosystem. When the bacteria found on the walls of Lechuguilla were analyzed, many of the microbes were determined not only to have resistance to natural antibiotics like penicillin, but also to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the second half of the twentieth century...
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Pursuing Adoption of Free and Open Source Software in Governments
Free and open source software creates a natural — and even necessary — fit with government. I joined a panel this past weekend at the Free Software Foundation conference LibrePlanet on this topic and have covered it previously in a journal article and talk. Our panel focused on barriers to its adoption and steps that free software advocates could take to reach out to government agencies. Read More »
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Q&A with Andy Oram: How Can We Tell Whether Predictive Analytics Are Biased?
The fear of reproducing society's prejudices through computer algorithms is being hotly discussed in both academic publications and the popular press. Just a few of the publications warning about bias in predictive analytics include the New York Times, the Guardian, the Harvard Business Review, and particularly a famous and hotly contested article by Propublica on predictions of recidivism among criminal defendants...
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Rapidly Increasing Acceptance of 'Open Source' Software by EU Nations
The news just keeps coming about the widespread acceptance and increasingly rapid deployment and use of 'open source' software solutions by local and national government agencies across the Euriopean Union (EU). Federal, state, and local government agencies in the U.S. might want to pay close attention.For example, read about OpenEyes in the U.K., or Pentaho Business Intelligence (BI) software being used in France, or ... Read More »
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Recommendations For Removing Copyright Hurdles To Scientific Research
The EU e-infrastructure coordination pro-iBiosphere project is preparing the ground for the pursuit of biological research in the digital age. In its "Draft policy for Open Access to data and information" scientists and lawyers recommend that hurdles posed by copyright and database protection should be removed by establishing exceptions for research in a new binding, Europe-wide regulation... Read More »
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Should All Academic Research Be Free And What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About Publishing
Last month the European Union offered a bold and striking call for all scientific literature to be made available to the world free of charge. Many questions remain regarding how such a vision can be made into reality, especially where the funding for such a mandate will come from. Such calls, happening amidst a sea change in the open access debate, offer a powerful moment of reflection into why the vast majority of scholarly research is still walled off from the public that largely pays for it...
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Strengthening Protection of Patient Medical Data
Americans seeking medical care expect a certain level of privacy. Indeed, the need for patient privacy is a principle dating back to antiquity, and is codified in U.S. law, most notably the Privacy Rule of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which establishes standards that work toward protecting patient health information. But the world of information is rapidly changing, and in this environment, U.S. rules fall precariously short in protecting our medical data...
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That Was The Open Access Week That Was
A round-up of some of the issues that got an airing during Open Access (OA) Week and in the days that followed, including more rumination on the implementation and implications of the RCUK OA policy, more bad (and some good) publisher behaviour, ideas for new directions in OA publishing and, finally, an important African perspective on the rumbling debate. Read More »
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The Case Of The Vanishing Bees
Pesticides & The Perfect Crime: In the widespread bee die-offs, bees often just vanish. One beekeeper calls it the Perfect Crime—no bodies, no murder weapon, no bees. What's happening to the bees? Read More »
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The Cyber Resilience Act Introduces Uncertainty And Risk Leaving Open Source Projects
What might happen if the uncertainty persists around who is held responsible under the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)? The global Open Source community is averse to legal risks and generally lacks access to counsel, so it’s very possible offers of source code will simply be withdrawn rather than seeking to resolve the uncertainty. The CRA rightly addresses the need for commercial suppliers to protect their customers from exploits and cyber attacks. But legislators have exposed the open development of software itself to the regulations rather than just the for-profit use of Open Source artifacts in the marketplace. They are incorrectly assuming that Dirk Riehle’s terminology calling single-company projects “commercial Open Source” means it’s possible to use the “commerciality” of an application to distinguish single-company activity from community projects, and by using the concepts of proprietary software to then define boundaries.
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The Dutch Presidency Rises to the Occasion: 15 Council Conclusions That Will Set the Way Forward for R&I in the European Union
Today, the EU Member State Ministers responsible for Research have adopted conclusions that will set the way forward for research and innovation. These conclusions are the result of the exemplary Dutch Presidency of the EU Council. A Presidency that has put research high on the agenda and has made its actions match its words by delivering on its priorities. The Council conclusions set the course of action on the three main priorities identified by the Dutch Presidency in research and innovation...
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