Politics

  • Romania’s Ministry of Education endorses open source

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Politics, Tech

    Romania coat of armsJust a few days after it was reported that scores of donated Linux laptops were languishing unused in Romania’s schools (posts passim), the country’s Ministry of Education is urging the schools to consider switching to free and open source operating systems and software, according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website. The Ministry confirmed this will help the schools to avoid legal problems from using unlicensed proprietary software.

    The new policy follows the expiry of an agreement between the Ministry and Microsoft. The Ministry is now urging schools to switch to open source alternatives, revert to earlier versions or buy new licences.

    The Ministry itself is no stranger to free and open source, using Linux and the Nginx web server. Furthermore, it has also published a recommended list (PDF, Romanian) of free and open source software for use in schools, which includes Edubuntu, the educational remix of Ubuntu Linux, desktop applications based on the Gnome window manager and other free and open source favourites, such as the LibreOffice productivity suite, Gimp graphics package and Scribus desktop publishing software.

  • My comments to HMG on open formats

    Steve WoodsOpen Standards, Politics, Tech

    ODF file iconIt may have escaped the notice of most of the country, but the Cabinet Office is currently consulting on the use of open formats, e.g. ODF, HTML, TXT and CSV, for documents when sharing them or collaborating with government on them.

    As an ardent supporter of open standards and open formats, I decided it was my civic duty to support the Cabinet Office’s welcome move to openness, all the more so as Microsoft was asking its pals in an open letter (in closed .docx format. Ed.) to try and water down the move to ODF by having its OOXML format adopted as well.

    My comments on the government’s proposals were as follows:

    I too welcome and wholeheartedly support the move to open standards and file formats and away from vendor lock-in and proprietary file formats, access to which is solely at the whim of software vendors. No single company should have a monopoly on the formats used for official documents and documents of record.

    In particular, I welcome the move to Open Document Format. I have been using ODF for many years in my role as company secretary of an IT co-operative and we have the satisfaction that our successors and future historians will be able to read our online and offline records without accessibility to our records being at the whim of a software supplier with a quasi-monopoly on office productivity products.

    Furthermore, I would advise against any use of OOXML (also known as Office Open XML), which is not a truly open standard and hasn’t even been implemented properly by the company that created it.

    I trust that you will implement open documents standards with all speed, after which you then need to tell other bodies, such as schools, local authorities, the community and voluntary sectors, that there are viable alternatives to proprietary file formats.

    Another thought: in the UK there are various timescales – 30, 50 & 100 years – for the release of documents to the public. This implies that whatever the format, we will still need to be able to read them 100 years from now. There is no reason to suppose that Microsoft will be around then, so using a proprietary format as a standard must surely be an unacceptable risk for the readability of public documents.

    If you wish to support the move to open standards and formats by HM Government, you have one day left as the consultation closes tomorrow.

  • Bristol Post Balls – the invisible Widdecombe

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Politics

    The Bristol Post has for years given favourable coverage to a North Somerset ‘zoo’ which has an interesting sideline in promoting creationism.

    Today’s edition continues this trend.

    Noah’s Ark ‘Zoo’ Farm has just taken delivery of a new African elephant and former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe was allegedly there to welcome its arrival, according to the photo caption in the report.

    Bristol Post screenshot

    I’d like to congratulate Ann on her choice of camouflage outfit!

    If you can see Ann in the picture, please let me know via the comments below.

  • Cambridgeshire Police spends nothing on linguists

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    When work restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants were relaxed at the start of the year, the usual xenophobic elements of the British media stoked fears that every criminal in eastern Europe would make a beeline for the UK and crime would soar.

    Emotive language was (ab)used, with the nation being told Bulgarians and Romanians would ‘flood’ into the country and dear old Blighty would be ‘swamped’ and similar such tosh.

    If crime had increased due to Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, this would have resulted in a massive rise in the criminal justice system’s use of linguists, as suspects and defendants are entitled to understand and follow the proceedings in their mother tongue.

    However, this surge in the use of East European linguists hasn’t actually happened.

    Indeed in response to Freedom of Information (FoI) Act queries, Cambridgeshire Police has revealed its spending on services for Bulgarian and Romanian linguists has actually declined, as revealed by the Cambridge News:

    Data has revealed the force spent just £9.10 on Bulgarian and £1,357.84 on Romanian translators in January last year when the restrictions were in place.

    But after they were lifted at the start of the year, the force spent zero pence on translators for the two languages.

    Read the full article.

    Hat tip: Katya Ford

  • Malta launches new open data site running open source

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Data, Open Source, Politics, Tech

    Malta’s new open data website is running on open source software, according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site.

    Screenshot of Malta's new open data site
    Screenshot of Malta’s new open data site

    The site, which is run by the Maltese Local Councils Association, uses Centos Linux as the operating system, the MySQL database management system, the Nginx web server and the WordPress content management system.

    At present it offers a wide number of tourism datasets open for using and reusing as well as useful and interesting information concerning open data.

    The open data portal has been created as a result of the EU’s HOMER project, harmonising open data in the Mediterranean through better access and reuse of public sector information.

    Open Data Malta aims to make available and exploitable Public Sector Information (PSI) related to the tourism sector in order to ensure transparency. By simply opening PSI, citizens can be better informed and participate in the decision making process.

  • 3 things to do on The Day We Fight Back

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    This Tuesday is a day to fight back against mass surveillance of communications.

    the day we fight back campaign banner

    Mass surveillance is a huge problem, as shown by the Snowden revelations on the communications interception activities of the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ. Governments are spying on us all, endangering the very fabric of democracy. Corporations are asking us to give away our privacy for a little convenience with much the same effect.

    Furthermore, mass surveillance is a hard problem to solve since we are essentially up against a very human fear of dangers hidden somewhere in the dark and we’re being told that surveillance will protect us from those dangers.

    However, surveillance not only fails at protecting us, it also makes everyone worse off in the long run.

    Here are 3 simple ways to do to counter the pervasiveness of surveillance.

    • Make your web browsing more secure by installing the HTTPS Everywhere extension in your browser. This will make it much harder for potential snoopers to intercept your connection with the web sites you look at, and will help to protect any data you send there.
    • Generate a GPG key, and start using it to encrypt your data, especially your email. (There’s help on the web.)
    • Write to one or more of your political representatives. Explain that you are deeply concerned about mass surveillance, and ask them to help end the practice. Be polite, brief and clear.

    By so doing, you have not only made yourself a little more secure, but have also helped others to improve their privacy and have contributed to driving political change.

  • CCC files internet spying charges against German state

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    CCC logoGermany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has filed a lawsuit against the German Federal government and other agencies in conjunction with human rights organisation the Liga für Menschenrechte e. V. (League for Human Rights). The government and its agencies are being charged with violating citizens’ personal lives by security services surveillance and toleration of such surveillance, Linux-Magazin reports.

    In addition to domestic and foreign agents, the charge filed by the plaintiffs with the Federal Prosecutor General is made against the chairman of the Federal Intelligence Service, the military counter-intelligence service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The CCC and the Liga are accusing these and the Federal government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, of aiding and abetting due to toleration of and co-operation with the surveillance activities of the American NSA and UK’s GCHQ.

    With the charge the instigators would like to initiate investigations by the Federal Prosecutor General since the secret service organisations and others have broken German law by the surveillance measures. The are charging intelligence service and Federal government officials of having “not only tolerated banned intelligence service activities, but also of having provided assistance to them actively and to a considerable extent”. This is contrary to § 99 of the Criminal Code (prohibited intelligence agency agent activity), §§ 201 et seq. of the Criminal Code (infringements of personal life and privacy) and § 258 of the Criminal Code (aiding and abetting the commission of crime).

    Furthermore, the plaintiffs are demanding in the charge that US whistleblower Edward Snowden is called as an expert witness. If called as a witness, he should receive safe conduct and be protected against extradition to the USA.

  • UK Government speaks of open standards and ODF

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    ODF file iconOn Wednesday the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called Sprint 14, in which it invited Ministers, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to showcase some major new digital public services for the first time.

    Among the speakers was Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who in his speech made some interesting and welcome noises about document formats:

    Today I can announce that we’ve set out the document formats that we propose should be adopted across government – and we’re asking you to tell us what you think about them.

    He then continued with equally welcome and interesting noises on open standards:

    Technical standards for document formats may not set the pulse racing – it may not sound like the first shot in a revolution. But be in no doubt: the adoption of open standards in government threatens the power of lock-in to propriety vendors yet it will give departments the power to choose what is right for them and the citizens who use their services.

    The documents formats referred to by Mr Maude in his speech can be found on the Cabinet Office’s Standards Hub section of its website on the Sharing or collaborating with government documents webpage, which states

    When dealing with citizens, information should be digital by default and therefore should be published online. Browser-based editing is the preferred option for collaborating on published government information. HTML (4.01 or higher e.g. HTML5) is therefore the default format for browser-based editable text. Other document formats specified in this proposal – ODF 1.1 (or higher e.g. ODF 1.2), plain text (TXT) or comma separated values (CSV) – should be provided in addition. ODF includes filename extensions such as .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.

    Whilst the government has conceded that open formats and standards should be used when dealing with citizens, how long will it take for changes to take place before editable documents intended for use by we peasants citizens will be available in anything other than the quasi-ubiquitous MS Office formats currently provided?

  • Swiss canton of Bern focuses open source

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    Bern coat of armsWith a massive majority of 130 in favour, 0 against and one abstention, the Grand Council (Grossrat), the parliament of the Canton of Bern, has passed the motion “To exploit synergies when using software in the Canton of Bern”, Computerworld.ch reports. The cantonal administration had previously announced its support for the request by the Evangelical People’s Party (EVP), Social Democratic Party (SP), Conservative Democratic Pary (BDP), the Green Party (GPS) and the Green Liberal Party (GLP). The individual points of the motion will now go to the Canton’s chief civil servant for implementation.

    With this motion the parliament wants the Cantonal Office for Computing and Organisation (KAIO) and Bedag Informatik AG, which is owned by the Canton, to co-operate in the information technology sector with other authorities on open source projects. Its own developments for which the Canton holds the copyright shall be released as open source software where reasonable so that other authorities can use the software and future development costs can be shared.

    In addition, managers for each new IT project must disclose in future which open source alternatives have been investigated during procurement. If none is included, this must be justified. The same criterion shall be applicable to every new specialist application or one that is to be adapted. Either a release under an open source licence must be planned here or a justification given as to why it should not be released as open source.

    Finally, the Canton of Bern is to be more actively involved in existing and new open source development and specialist applications and their respective organisations.

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