Senator Kate Lundy hosted a pre-2020 Summit event in Canberra last week to generate ideas on how open source technology, open standards and open access to information might transform the way government departments and the business world operate.

Open source advocate and former Linux Australia president Pia Waugh today revealed she will be leaving her business and joining the staff of Senator Kate Lundy as a policy advisor.

Google architect Grant Allen joined Labor Senator Kate Lundy and analyst Sam Higgins at Open Cebit 2008 to debate how the open source community can compete with software giants in a market geared to splurging millions on IT in return for SLAs and vendor liability.

The Liberal Democrats have hit out at the government's failure to use more open source software, three years after it pledged to avoid 'lock-in' to proprietary systems. The government published a policy document, 'Open Source Software: use within UK government' in 2004, promising to consider open source alongside proprietary products in IT procurements...

Misapplication of “value for money” requirements when purchasing software results in poor value for money - Government purchasing policies for software tend to support the creation of monopolies.

The Icelandic government has released a policy on free and open source software. In short, the policy states that when buying software free and open source software should be considered on an equal footing with proprietary software, that software based on open standards shall be chosen, that lock-ins to specific vendors should be avoided (choosing free software is one means to achieve this), that bespoke or customized software shall be reusable (and free and open source software achieves this), and finally that students of Icelandic educational institutes shall have the opportunity to learn about and use free and open source software on a par with proprietary software.

This policy applies to all state institutions and organizations operated with public funds.

Recently Glyn Moody and Richard Steel, who is both the president of SocITM (the Society of local government IT Managers) and CIO of the London Borough of Newham, had a minor spat across their respective blogs at ComputerWorld, provoked by Steel's response to to the UK government's newly announced policy for the adoption and promotion of open source - Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Gover

Open Source For Government: "Bureaucrats, Technocrats and Policy Cats: How the Government is turning to Open Source, and Why."

The UK government has rejigged its open source and open standards software procurement policy, following pressure from OSS vendors last autumn. Early last year the Cabinet Office revised its rules on public sector open source software purchases, but many OSS players complained that the policy amendments didn’t go far enough.