SFScon 2020 - Flavia Marzano - The history of free software adoption in Italian Public Administrations

ROTFL: Resilience, Openness, Technology, Freedom, LiteracyFlavia Marzano
The history of free software adoption
in Italian Public Administrations
What has been done
and what is still missing
Flavia Marzano
November 13th 2020

ROTFL:
Resilience
Openness
Technology
Freedom
Literacy

Who
I am
I am a #WhyNotter J
o  Computer scientist (nobody is perfect)
o  Former Director of the Master on Smart Public
Administration at Link Campus University
o  Advisor for Public Administration on digital
transformation
o  Founder of the WISTER network,
General States of Innovation, Eutopian
o  Former Rome City Councillor deputy for: smart city, innovation,
participation, inclusion, active citizenship, digital transformation
o  Other tags: open source, open data, smart land, equal opportunity
for all, SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)

Law n. 633 (April 22,1941)
Art. 11
•  State administrations, provinces and
municipalities have the copyright on works
created and published under their name and
at their expense and expense.

The story starts a long time ago
The first policy initiatives took place with the bills
presented to the Senate by Senator
Fiorello Cortiana (February 2002) "Rules on IT
pluralism, on the adoption and dissemination of
free software and on the portability of IT documents in the PA”, and
to the Chamber of Representatives by Hon.
Pietro Folena (March 2002) “Rules on IT pluralism and incentives
for the diffusion of free software”), with the aim of spreading and
developing free software … ".

Minister Lucio Stanca
In the wake of these initiatives, the Minister for Innovation and Technologies
Lucio Stanca set up the Commission for open source software in the PA
(Decree October 31, 2002) with the task of "examining the technical, economic
and organizational structures linked to the use of open source in the PA by
analyzing the positions on the subject of the European Union, the major
industrialized countries as well as market operators to provide documented
evaluation elements for the choices and strategies on the subject of the PA ".
The Commission, chaired by prof. Angelo Raffaele Meo, produced the
"Cognitive survey on open source software", a first analysis of the international
context of application of FLOSS, of the possible evaluation criteria for the use of
FLOSS in the PA and of any interventions on the level of standardization and on
the organizational level for the adoption of the same.

Stanca Directive (December 2003 )
On the basis of the indications contained in the survey, MIT issued the
Directive "Development and use of computer programs by PAs" with the aim
of providing PAs "technical and operational indications and criteria to
manage more effectively the process of preparing or acquiring computer
programs ", taking into account the availability of FLOSS on the market.
According to the Directive, PAs must acquire computer programs after
carrying out a comparative technical and economic assessment, also taking
into account the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the individual solutions and
the exit cost.
Published in G.U. 31/2004

Regional laws… since 2004
•  Toscana L.1/2004
•  Emilia Romagna (2004)
•  Umbria (2006)
•  Veneto (2008)
•  Piemonte (2009)
•  Lazio (2012)
•  Puglia (2012)
•  …

CAD/2005, legislation on digital PA
It is a single text that brings together and organizes
the rules concerning the computerization of the
Public Administration in relations with citizens and
businesses. Established by the legislative decree
n. 82 (March 7, 2005), was subsequently modified
and integrated first with the legislative decree n.
179 (August 22, 2016) and then with the legislative
decree n. 217 (December 13, 2017) to promote
digital citizenship rights and make them effective.

CAD art. 68
Public administrations acquire computer programs or parts of them in
compliance with the principles of economy and efficiency, investment
protection, reuse and technological neutrality, following a comparative
technical and economic evaluation of the following solutions available on the
market:
a.  software developed on behalf of the public administration;
b.  reuse of software or parts thereof developed on behalf of the public
administration;
c.  free or open source software;
d.  software usable in cloud computing mode;
e.  proprietary software by using a license to use;
f.  software combination of the previous solutions.

CAD art. 69
Reuse of open solutions and standards
1. Public administrations that are owners of IT solutions
and programs created on specific indications of the
public client, are obliged to make the relative source
code available, complete with documentation and
released in the public repertory under an open license,
free for other public administrations o to legal entities
that intend to adapt them to their needs, unless there are
justified reasons of public order and security, national
defense and electoral consultations.

Second “Meo” Commission 2007
The Minister for Reforms and Innovations in the Public Administration
Luigi Nicolais has established the National Commission for Open
Source software in the PA. The ministerial establishing the Commission
(May 16, 2007) defined three priority objectives:
•  an analysis of the European and Italian scenario;
•  the definition of operational guidelines to support Administrations in
the procurement of open source software;
•  an analysis of the open source approach to foster application
cooperation, interoperability and reuse.

Many Municipalities…
•  Rome Council Resolution: October 2016:
Commitment to the use of free or open source
software in the Capitoline Administration
–  14.000 LibreOffice Licenses installed
–  more than 7.000 Office Licences not in use for more than
6 months uninstalled
–  software for accounting switched to open source
–  Zimbra (email client)
•  I left in September 2019, let’s hope they will continue…

Guidelines for acquisition and reuse of software
in PA
•  Thanks to the new guidelines PAs can reuse
sw without specific agrements, making only
reference to the open license
May 2019

Letter by Prof. Meo to
Minister Azzolina (June 2020)
I would like to point out to you the inadequacy of the hint pages
dedicated on your Ministry portal to important proprietary educational
platforms that are hosted on infrastructures controlled by web giants
(such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon) where data and metadata of
our students are stored. I also remember that schools are required to
choose the solutions to be acquired only after having carried out the comparative
assessment required by art. 68 of Legislative Decree 82/2005, which requires a preference
for free software: it would be important for the Ministry to support schools in fulfilling this
obligation… Keep in mind that free platforms, characterized by functions and performances
comparable or superior to those of the most well-known proprietary platforms, are available
on the Internet.…for this reason, we would like to ask you to take action, within the Cabinet,
to seize this opportunity by allocating the investments that will soon be made in digital
exclusively to free software technologies.

The European Commission
adopted its first strategy for the
internal use of
open source software
in 2000…

EU Open Source Software Strategy
2020-2023 (1)

… what a revelation! J

2020-2023 (2)

“Open source impacts the digital autonomy of Europe. Against the hyper-scalers in
the cloud, it is likely that open source can give Europe a chance to create and maintain
its own, independent digital approach and stay in control of its processes, its
information and its technology, because:
•  open source is independent of companies and countries. It minimises the
risk of vendor lock-in and getting caught up in political shenanigans or trade
disputes;
•  open source is the leading model and inherently provides the most flexible platform
for software development at the digital frontier, from blockchain, high-performance
computing and artificial intelligence to the internet of things;
•  by leveraging open source, Europe can devise an approach to cloud computing
and software-as-a-service that balances their advantages and risks;
•  being open promotes trust in the Union and its institutions.”
2020-2023 (3)

Strategy for technological
innovation and digitization
of the country 2025
•  Open source is never quoted
•  Reuse is quoted only twice

What can be done?
•  An analysis on how many and which PAs have
“non open source” solutions and on the
motivation of their choices
•  Proposal of a bill to include also the obligation to
publish the motivation that led to the choice of
proprietary software in the "transparent
administration" section of the PA sites

Now it's time to team up and move forward!
The path traced is the right one but we need to
keep verifying that the active processes continue,
that the rules, guidelines and regulations are
respected!
"How far is the summit?"
”Go on and don't think about it" (F. Nietzsche)
What can be done? (2)

Let’s be optimistic…
President von der Leyen:
“It may be too late to replicate hyper-scalers,
but it is not too late to achieve technological
sovereignty in some critical technology areas.”

Together we can do it!

Thank you for your attention!
https://twitter.com/flavia_marzano
https://www.linkedin.com/in/flaviamarzano/
…knowledge sharing…
This presentation, in its original parts, is covered by a license
Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/it/legalcode

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