LocalFOSS

In a far reaching plan announced on friday 29th July, the government of Extremadura has announced that will be switching all of its PC's across to gnuLinex (a locally developed Linux distribution) and ODF.

"All the computers of the Junta of Extremadura (goverment state of Spain) will be running free software within a year. This project makes the Regional Government the first Public Administration to adopt standards upheld by international organizations, that favour 'technological innovation and the reduction of user dependency.'" said Luis Milln de Vzquez de Miguel, Infrastructures and Technological Development counciller for the Extermadura government.

Vzquez de Miguel underlined the fact that the Junta de Extremadura "is the first Public Administration to adopt these standards" and that all the international organizations related to ITCs agree that this is the most important step towards "technological innovation, the reduction of user, company and public administration dependency on proprietary, non-compatible applications, and the increment of interoperability between systems and applications on a global scale."

The deadline for the plan "is one year counting from the date the agreement is approved", Vzquez de Miguel said, and he added that at the end of the period, all the computer work carried out by the civil servants of the Junta must be done so on the GnuLinEx operating system and that all additional software just
be open source or be distributed under a free license.

The full press release (in Spanish) can be found here