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---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Karsten Gerloff gerloff@fsfeurope.org Date: 2012/2/28 Subject: Procurement campaign in Finland To: team-reports@fsfeurope.org
Hi everyone,
here is a report on a project that has been running for a while: A campaign to improve public procurement practices in Finland. The concept was developed by Otto, together with Finnish lawyer Martin van Willebrandt, and started after coordination with council@. I'm quite excited about it, and hope we can replicate it in other countries -- reuseability is part of the project design.
But here's what it's about:
Public procurement practices are a big problem for Free Software, and for Free Software companies. So Otto and lawyer (and Fellow) Martin van Willebrandt have started working, under my supervision, on a project to fix public procurement in Finland. The goal is to make sure that every procurement official in Finland is familiar with existing rules meant to ensure fair competition, and to put pressure on those who don't change their behaviour.
While we've been working on the procurement topic for quite a while especially at the European level, we've never before approached it in such a coherent fashion. So when Otto came to me and council@ with the plan for this project a few months ago, we were quite excited. At Otto's request, we've kept it quiet so far. The project is planned to run until the end of 2012.
In late October 2011, Otto and Martin started out by gathering information about procurement actions from public websites, and looking at the procurement documents to see if there was any obvious discrimination against Free Software in there. (While making this legally watertight takes a little work, it's not hugely difficult. If a document includes phrases like "Microsoft SharePoint solution", it's probably violating Finnish and European law.) So far, they've trawled through more than 700 procurement notices.
With the groundwork laid, Otto and Martin then started building a network of contacts in politics, the public sector and private industry who might back this effort.
At the moment, if they find a procurement action that they're absolutely sure is in violation of the rules, they send a letter requesting that the document be corrected. So far they have sent six such letters - not a lot, since they do this only in cases where they are very sure that there is a violation of the law.
If Martin and Otto find a particularly fishy procurement action, they will take a look at the mandatory public diaries (felix Finlandia!) of the officials in question. If someone pushes out a request for Microsoft products after a one-week trip to Redmond, that would be excellent grounds for asking some pointed questions.
Right about now, Otto and Martin will start putting out press releases on the project, especially on individual cases they find. These will be strictly factual, rather than sensational in tone. They would mainly be targeted at Finland, but we'll add a European angle when appropriate. As the project picks up speed, it's likely to come under heavy pressure from proprietary software companies.
Polite words and public pressure can have quite an effect. But they have their limits. The final step for the project might be to set an example in court. Before going down this road, we would make certain that there is a significant breach of the rules, that we have a watertight case, and that there's funding available to cover legal costs throughout the process. FSFE's General Assembly would decide whether to proceed.
One thing that I really like about this project is that it's reuseable. Once we've tested the concept in Finland, we can replicate it in other countries with only minor modifications.
-- Karsten Gerloff [ ] gerloff@fsfeurope.org Free Software Foundation Europe [ ][ ][ ] [http://fsfe.org] President | | +49 176 9690 4298 Your donation powers our work! [http://fsfe.org/donate/]
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