About the COSPA Project

When:

• From January 2004 to December 2005 extended to June 2006

Who:

• Fifteen European partners coordinated by the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen

Funding:

Total cost of the project: € 4 million EU contribution: € 2,6 million

Proposal

Public Administrations spend every year a considerable amount of money for Commercial Off-The-Shelf software licenses. By using appropriate technologies, such expenses might be either dramatically reduced, or re-routed to further develop local business ecosystems.
The Consortium aims at introducing, analysing, and supporting the use of Open Data Standards (ODS) and Open Source (OS) software for personal productivity and document management in European Public Administrations (PA).
There are currently a number of initiatives aimed at introducing OS software in European PAs, but they are mainly performed at a local level, with no coordination, no sharing of knowledge or practices and no rigorous cost/benefit analysis. In particular, the introduction of ODS and OS software might be hampered by:

• cost of data migration;
• interoperability and integration with existing solutions;
• personnel training;
• concerns about support, maintenance, sustainability and future proofing.

The Consortium aims at building a leading, effective and visible success case for the introduction of ODS and OS solutions in the PA by:

• deploying ODS and OS desktop software solutions in several European PAs, and benchmarking their effectiveness through a cost/benefit analysis;
• building a European, multilingual, freely-accessible knowledge and experience base by comparing and pooling knowledge, and by building on and complementing current activities in the field;
• disseminating the results and the experiences of the study through a series of workshops at regional and European level.

The motivation for using OS software and ODS are mainly given by their extreme versatility, adaptability, transparency of functioning, and by the savings on software licenses. The European society as a whole would benefit from the adoption of ODS and OS software in the public sector:

• the citizen would not be required to buy proprietary software for accessing the information and services provided by the PA. That would in turn increase the accessibility of public services;
• PAs would increase “trust and confidence” by using recognised transparent and secure technologies;
• businesses would enjoy better access to Government services, by eliminating possible digital impediments.
  

COSPA fact sheet