The New Zealand State Services Commission's (SSC) championing of open-source software in government helped its ICT (Information and Communications Technology) branch pick up an award in the government category of the inaugural New Zealand Open Source Awards, held in Wellington this month.

The first official order for the so-called "$100 laptop" has been placed by the government of Uruguay.

Mandriva today announced that the Nigerian government has selected Intel-powered classmate PCs running on Mandriva Linux for educational use in nationwide pilot in Nigeria. Mandriva is working with Intel Corporation and Technology Support Center Ltd. to provide 17,000 Intel-powered classmate PCs.

Becta, the United Kingdom government's adviser on IT in schools, has taken Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading over anti-competitive practices--but open source campaigners say Becta is still effectively promoting Microsoft.

The Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) today began the rollout of Macquarie University's Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) software to all NT public schools. LAMS is freely available as open source software from Macquarie's non-profit LAMS Foundation.

Ubuntu founder and IT entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth tells Computing SA that picking open source software was not only good for South Africa but also important for the rest of the African continent.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project in the process of building a free, Web-accessible, user-editable map of the world. So far, most of its map data has come through user-contributed GPS traces, but OSM has recently undertaken the bulk import of government-collected data covering the entire United States.

Urging public administrations to use Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) and open standards is one thing. Getting them to really take the jump is quite another. In the Netherlands, the OSOSS programme is helping ministries and municipalities to make their IT strategies more open.