Open Source Software in Public Administration. A real example OSS for egovernment Observatories

Open Source Software (OSS) has risen to great prominence. Briefly, OSS programs are programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program (without having to pay royalties to previous developers). In the last years the Italian Public Administrations (PA) points out the benefits of using OSS as a valid alternative to closed source software. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the state of the art of OSS in Italian PA and describe two pratical examples of the use of OSS in the e-government area. Those examples are represented by the local e-government observatories developed respectively by Emilia Romagna and Liguria Regions. A real and settled knowledge about current and past egovernment initiatives in Italy can improve the future planning. For these reasons several Italian Regions developed Observatories for e-Government and Informatio...