Constitutional affairs legal affairs

Workshop: Legal aspects of free and open source software 
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The Strategy also includes the establishment of an Open Source Implementation Group, a 
System Integrator Forum
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  and  an  Open  Source  Advisory  Panel
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 to assist with the 
deployment of agile
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 solutions using open source technology and to educate, promote and 
facilitate the technical and cultural change needed to increase the use of open source 
across the government. It also envisages the creation of a ‘virtual’ centre of excellence 
across the government and the private sector which can enable fast start-up and 
mobilisation for such agile projects. 
3.4.2 Results 
Open source advocates such as the Open Forum Europe welcomed the UK Government’s 
“determination to move the public sector in the UK away from being locked in to large scale 
single supplier proprietary software solutions”
154
. Criticising the reluctance that 
governments showed until then to consider open alternatives, the Open Forum Europe 
expressed its yearning to observe concrete results: “it is in procurement that the Strategy 
will either come alive or wither.”  
In its report
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 of May 2012, the government sets out the progresses achieved over one 
year of implementation. As far as open source is concerned, the report only refers to the 
publication of the procurement toolkit and confirms the establishment of the Open Source 
Advisory Panel. An e-petition site, which has been built in 8 weeks on open source software 
and using open standards, is reported as a success story. No other figure or example is 
provided.  
In its assessment of June 2012, the Institute for Government (an independent charity 
helping to improve government effectiveness) does not report much more on concrete 
results in open source adoption
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. On the contrary, it stresses the ICT leaders’ view that 
the focus should be on enabling the government to perform more effectively and not on 
implementing the ICT strategy “in a tick box fashion”. 
The press reported that the Strategy is largely lobbied against
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, and that during a round 
table event organised by the Cabinet Office, open standards opponents easily dominated a 
meeting motion against the government’s open standards policy
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. The definition of the 
“open standard” concept is the crux of the tension. Reporting on the event, a 
representative of the government observed that “the consensus was that the definition and 
proposed policy would be detrimental to competition and innovation”
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.  
This battle around open standards questions the sustainability of the Strategy in general 
and seems therefore to also have a detrimental effect on open source adoption. 
3.4.3 Features 

 
ACTION:  
 
Policy (Governmental Strategy) 

 
DECISION LEVEL:   National 

 
ACTION LEVEL:  
National 
                                                 
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 See 
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2011/02/24/open-source-si-forum.pdf
. 
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  A  list  of  the  membres  of  the  Open  Source  Avisory  Panel  has  been  communicated  in  the  framework  of  a 
parliamentary question, available at 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmpubadm/writev/goodgovit/it65.htm.
 
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 Agile software development is a software development method where requirements and solutions evolve 
flexibly through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. 
154
See the OFE’s press release of 30 March 2011, 
http://www.openforumeurope.org/press-room/press-
releases/openforum-europe-welcomes-the-publication-of-the-uk-governments-ict-strategy
. 
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 “One year on : Implementing the Government ICT Strategy”, May 2012, available at 
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61950/One-Year-On-ICT-
Strategy-Progress.pdf
. 
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 “System upgrade? The first year of the Government’s ICT strategy Features”, June 2012, available at 
http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/System%20Upgrade.pdf.
 
157
 G.
 
M
OODY
, « UK Government Open Standards : the great betrayal of 2012 », Computer World UK, 22 December 
2011,  available at 
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2011/12/uk-government-open-standards-
the-great-betrayal-of-2012/index.htm
. 
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“Proprietary lobby triumphs in first open standards showdown”, Computer Weekly, 13 April 2012, available at 
http://www.computerweekly.com/cgi-bin/mt-
search.cgi?blog_id=102&tag=BCS%20Open%20Source%20Speclialist%20Group&limit=20.
 
159
 “Are open standards a closed barrier?”, op. cit. 

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Policy Department C: Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs 
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
 
OBJECTIVES:   
To foster the reuse of software across the administration. 
To level the playing field for open source solutions. 

 
MEASURES TAKEN:  Publication of a toolkit (set of guides) 
Setting up expert panels and forums 
Maintaining an asset register and an applications store 
Operating a ‘virtual’ centre of excellence across government 

 
LICENSING:   
Not specified (“open source” is the term used). 

 
EFFECTIVENESS: 
There does not seem to be any important achievement so far, 
but it seems also too early to draw conclusions. 
Lobbies are actively opposing the adopted open standard 
strategy, and the government seems open to reconsidering its 
position. This situation also negatively impacts FOSS adoption. 
3.5. 
Belgium: IMIO (inter-municipal company) 
3.5.1 General 
presentation 
IMIO (Intercommunale de Mutualisation Informatique et Organisationnelle)
 
 is a 
government owned inter-municipal company that has been incorporated on 28 November 
2011 (under the form of a limited liability cooperative company) by a partnership of ten 
Walloon municipalities with the blessing and support of the Walloon Region
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, which is the 
supervisory and approving authority
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 of the Walloon municipalities. 
IMIO has not been created from scratch, as it is based on the previous “CommunesPlone” 
project
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, a collaborative “bottom up” approach which gathered many Walloon 
municipalities aiming at gaining independence from IT services providers by developing, 
essentially by themselves and in a cooperative manner, applications and websites for their 
own use as well as for their citizens. The CommunesPlone community was composed to a 
large extent of IT workers employed by the municipalities involved or by the SME’s 
providing the services to the latter and to the public company. IMIO has taken over the 
CommunesPlone project and pushed it further by providing an official, logistical and 
incorporated structure. 
The statute of the company provides that its statutory objectives are to promote and foster 
the mutualising of organisational solutions and of IT products and services for the local 
authorities of Wallonia. To do so, IMIO must either act as a central procurement agency 
which will procure software via public tenders, or develop internally software applications 
which are mutualised and distributed under a free licence. In the latter case, IMIO is 
expected to manage a free software patrimony which must be coherent and robust and 
which belongs to the public administrations. IMIO must ensure that it has internally the 
technical control of the software, and that the latter will evolve, remain sustainable and be 
distributed in compliance with the applicable free licence. The statutes further specify that 
the company produces and mutualises, amongst others, Plone-based open source software 
(Plone being a Content Management System licensed under the GPLv2). 
The three main activities of IMIO are
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: 

 
Producing (procuring, developing or procuring the development of) open source 
software to meet the needs of local authorities (IMIO works also with a network of 
open source SMEs)
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; 
                                                 
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 In its Regional Policy Declaration of 2009-2014, the Walloon government has set as one of its objective to 
promote the use of free software. See “Projet de Déclaration de politique communautaire 2009-2014”, available at 
http://www.awt.be/contenu/tel/awt/declaration_politique_regionale_2009_2014.pdf
. 
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 “Autorité de tutelle”. 
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 See the IDABC study « 
Networks effects 
: Plone for Belgium and Beyond 
», available at 
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/elibrary/case/networks-effects-plone-belgium-and-beyond-0
. 
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 More information is available at 
http://www.imio.be/presentation
. 
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 See the Joinup news “Walloon communities sharing software as an alternative to procurement” available at 
 
http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/walloon-communities-sharing-software-alternative-procurement
. 

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