With 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.