Free software and public administrations?

[Anton Zinoviev]

Hi!

First to present myself.  I am a member of Free Software Association
-- this is a Bulgarian based non-governmental organisation which
promotes and advocates the free software.  We intend to be an
associated organisation of FSF Europe, but we haven't had enough
man-power to apply for this and in fact the cause of this mail is
different.

Next month we and the Bulgarian Center for the Study of Democracy
(this is another non-governmental organisation) are going to organise
a discussion about the free software and how it can be used in the
public administration.  Some members of the Parliament of Bulgaria as
well as other officers of the administration will participate.

Now in Bulgaria an active campaign against the free software is going.
There were books and TV-transmissions explaining that the free
software is evil (unfortunately we heard that one of these books is
being translated in English).  "Independent" busyness committees
decide that people involved in the free software talk much about its
advantages but actually it is not applicable in most cases.  As a side
result of this campaign more people heard about the free software. :-)

Anyway, in the discussion next month we expect to be asked many
inconvenient questions.  We need concrete facts concerning
applications of free software in the public administrations and
organisations in other countries, mostly European.  Can you help with
URLs or other information?  [1]

Undoubtedly such information will be very helpful not only to us.  I
think it is worth to have it somewhere on your www-site.

Anton Zinoviev

[1] Please note that it is possible that all you know some things that we
    don't.