Hungarian government goes 50 per cent open source

The Hungarian government has announced that it will be modifying procurement rules to allow open source to be used in public sector organisations. Previously, procurement rules had apparently named vendors such as Microsoft and Novell. The new rules, according to Ferenc Baja, deputy minister for information technology, will allocate the same amount of money to acquiring open source products as to proprietary products. The move was announced at a press conference on April 2nd.

This means that a budget of around 40 million euros will be available to be tendered for by open source vendors as part of the centralised tendering process. The vendors will be able to begin the process of tendering for open source based projects in public sector and higher education establishment in a few weeks.

One Hungarian open source solution provider, ULX Open Source Consulting, welcomed the change. Gábor Szentiványi, CEO of ULX said, "ULX welcomes this news from the Hungarian Senior State Secretariat for Informatics, which was long overdue. It will be the first time that open source solutions will gain the same equal status as proprietary vendors in centralised public sector tenders. This recognition of open source by the Hungarian government will hopefully also encourage the private sector to investigate the potential of non-proprietary software to cut cost during these tough economic times.”

See also:

• Computerworld.hu report (in Hungarian)

(djwm)