Support to e-government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe

Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe (abbreviated: UNDP FOSS project) This document presents detailed information about the project, the participants in it, the work done and the current status. This document is available under the Creative Commons “Attribution-2.5" license.

Table of Contents About Internet Society – Bulgaria........................................................................................................................1 Objectives of the project......................................................................................................................................2 Target group of the project...................................................................................................................................3 Key partners........................................................................................................................................................4 Applications used.................................................................................................................................................4 Design specifications...........................................................................................................................................5 End client usage model........................................................................................................................................6 Hardware and software used...............................................................................................................................7 Motivation to choose open source.......................................................................................................................8 Problem addressed..............................................................................................................................................8 Solution to the problem........................................................................................................................................9 Systems deployed.............................................................................................................................................10 Benefits from FOSS deployment.......................................................................................................................10 Impact................................................................................................................................................................11 Lessons learned................................................................................................................................................12 Current project status.........................................................................................................................................13 Advantages and disadvantages from using free and open source software......................................................13 Surprises and challenges...................................................................................................................................14 Other relevant information.................................................................................................................................15 Sharing the knowledge......................................................................................................................................16 Key persons who can provide testimonials about the project............................................................................16

About Internet Society – Bulgaria Internet Society Bulgaria is an independent, not-for-profit organization incorporated in Bulgaria in 1995. The Internet Society of Bulgaria is a recognized chapter of the Internet Society, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, USA and Geneva, Switzerland. Internet Society Bulgaria (ISOC Bulgaria) directs its efforts to develop the Information society in Bulgaria and promote more rapid adoption and dissemination of the Internet – accessible, affordable, ubiquitous network. The large scope of this goal includes a lot of sub-activities, connected and supplementing the initial aim. Internet Society Bulgaria is a primary source of reliable information on the development of the information technologies in Bulgaria. Experts from Internet Society actively participate in the work of

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --different administrations and organizations, including the National Assembly, Ministries and agencies within the Bulgarian Council of Ministers. ISOC-Bulgaria has influence over ICT-related decisions within the government, and in the ICT legislation. ISOC-Bulgaria has participated and supported all major political parties in the development of their election platforms, with relation to development of the information society in Bulgaria. The President and Chairman of the Board of ISOC-Bulgaria is also Chairman of the Bulgarian President's IT council (www.president.bg/sit) ISOC Bulgaria has participated in the drafts and passing of laws for e-signature, telecommunications, computer crimes, and other relevant laws. ISOC Bulgaria ensured court protection of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and of Internet users against acts and actions of the government, aimed at controlling the access to the Internet. ISOC Bulgaria also works on cyber-security, related to ratification of the EU Convention on Cybercrime, in cooperation with the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice. ISOC Bulgaria is an active partner in initiatives for promotion of Information Society in Bulgaria, public awareness and international cooperation and partnership building. Through the years, ISOC-Bulgaria became a trusted partner and focal point for different research and information inquiries. It has been invited to comment publicly a lot of important issues in the ICT area, to participate in round-tables, workshops, to make presentations itself. ISOC Bulgaria is the leader and porting organization of the translation and localization of Creative Commons, as well as active in forming the community of authors, using the licenses. ISOC-Bulgaria is also an accredited organization to the WSIS and participates actively in the work of the civil society, and the governments. Currently, ISOC BG actively participates in two FP6 projects, that treat FOSS at international level – these are FlossWorld (http://flossworld.org) and Tossad (Towards Open Source Software Adoption and Dissemination http://tossad.org). The tOSSad project aims at improving the outcomes of the F/OSS communities throughout Europe through supporting the coordination and networking of these communities by means of state-of-the-art studies, national program initiations, usability cases, curriculum development and implementation of collaborative information portal and web based groupware. The project started in February 2005 and will last for two years. FLOSSWorld primarily aims to strengthen Europe’s leadership in international research in FLOSS and open standards, and to exploit research and policy complementaries to improve international cooperation, by building a global constituency of policy-makers and researchers. The most recent initiatives are related to further development of Free and Open source software tools and applications for integrated approach to lower the level of unemployment and poverty reduction through ICT. This project started i in cooperation with UN Poverty Reduction Trust Fund NY, the initiative is named “Enhancing service delivery, social protection and livelihood support for the poor through ICT”. The main goal of the project is to develop a tool for Integrated Approach to employment/SME support, social service delivery and training through ICT. It envisages development of a web portal in order to serve the needs of the local labor bureaus. This portal aims to create collaboration with three key stakeholders: job seekers, employers and SMEs. The project also envisages computer literacy training and consequent certification for unemployed and/or not yet qualified people from the most disadvantaged groups: e.g. minorities; women; graduating students from social schools (orphans); people with disabilities; older people. The training is expected to include basic e-literacy (knowledge about working with word processing and spreadsheet software and with the browser) as well as passing of European-recognized independent certification tests.

Objectives of the project The herewith presented project is “Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe” - FOSS Project. The primary objective of the project is to help raise the understanding about how to benefit from free and open source software through piloting and advocacy activities and, in this connection, to change an existing environment into a one, in which open source software is understood and used for e-government

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --applications at the municipal level. The project’s development objective is to strengthen people’s participation in local affairs, support democracy, generate savings in local budgets, and provide employment opportunities for local IT sector. This will increase effectiveness and transparency of public policy through wider and faster replication of effective e-governance instruments within and among communities. The ultimate objective of the project is to support the European integration processes by bridging the existing “digital” divide between Southeastern European states and the European Union at large, by providing new “digital opportunities” to empower communities politically, socially and economically, in addition to the existing commercial e-government tools, and by further promoting intraand inter-sub-regional peer-to-peer networking and cooperation. The pilot country in which the project was implemented was Bulgaria, expanding after that to Macedonia, Kosovo, and currently it is to be implemented in Turkey. The aim is to address mainly the municipalities and focus on local governance, because in the South East European region, the municipalities possess by default with scarce budget resources and are not able to invest in software, as well as, hardly improve their ICT infrastructure. The following main directions of the project implementation strategy has been defined: 1.Open access. Ensure open access to the population through the web. Creation of city portals, with online documentary system that allow users to interact through the Internet with the municipality. 2. Needs assessment for policy and application requirements. Identify the needs of the municipalities and ensure that wherever possible, migration towards open source will be enabled. Examine national and regional policy frameworks in terms of supporting FOSS. This also includes integration of used software, ensuring usage of e-signatures, working with e-documents – as appropriate through the national and European legislature. 3.Implementation and piloting. Assist the municipalities through making available open source software, train and familiarize municipal employees with the new environment, and assist them in the development of initial applications of a number of types. Capacity building, training, advocacy and competency development have been applied as crosscutting tools at all stages of the project implementation process.

Target group of the project The primary target group are the municipalities from South-Eastern Europe, and particularly, the Balkans region. As long as the major asset of free and open source software is its potential to be easily replicated at little cost is was identified to be of significant importance at the community(municipality) level which are the authorities that are most closely communicating with the citizens and, as a rule, possess scarce budgetary resources to purchase commercial software products. The second target group which benefits directly by the project are the main citizens, who are able to improve their communication with the municipal authorities and lower their costs related to the usage of certain services. This target group can be divided in several subgroups that benefit from the project: – As long as the pilot municipality is Kardjali (Bulgaria), which is mainly populated with ethnic turks, the project is addressing the integration of ethnic minorities, enhancing their opportunities to communicate in electronic ways with the municipalities. In the Balkans region, the ethnic minorities are not paid much attention regarding improving their IT skills and integrating them into the esociety. – There are more than 20,000 people that emigrated from Bulgaria (in particular, from the Kardjali region) in the last fifteen years and currently live in Turkey. They are with double or Bulgarian only citizenship and they need to communicate with the municipality of Kardjali to receive certain documents (such as, copy of Birth Certificate, copy of marital status certificate, etc.). For each of these tasks, they need to go to Bulgaria (in Kardjali municipality) to obtain these documents. The project tries to help these citizens to save time and money, and to make their communication with the municipality easier. – All other citizens, that are from Bulgarian, Macedonia, Kosovo municipalities that take part in the project benefit.

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe ---

Key partners The project key partners are as follows: 

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Government of the Republic of Bulgaria as represented by the local authorities in the Municipalities of Kardjali, Vratza, Mezdra, Peshtera, Belovo, Dryanovo, Kostenetz. They sent letters of interest to participate and benefit from the Project's activities. Municipal authorities provided all the necessary support for the migration and training processes, as well as for the installation of the city portals. United Nations Development Programme Bulgaria provided overall support during the whole implementation of the project, including management issues. “Interspace “ Media and Art Center was the main consultant under the FOSS Project, as the official ERiders organization in Bulgaria. They provided the necessary support for the migrations in the municipalities, provided trainings and helped with the development of the educational materials. UNDP/New York Programme “Capacity development through knowledge sharing and development: Free/open source software for developing countries” - funding of the Project UNOPS – Implementing partner United Nations Development Programme Macedonia supported the migrations and trainings in the municipality of Gevgelija, Macedonia United Nations Development Programme Kosovo supported the migrations and trainings in the municipality of Klina in Kosovo Telecenters Project of the Government of the Republic of Bulgaria and UNDP – provided infrastructure for the training in Dryanovo Municipality Bulgarian Linux community – support and public awareness events, co-organization of the annual Open Fest in Sofia and relevant presentations on the achievements of the Project Internet Societies in the participating European countries – support UNDP/Bratislava Regional programme – support E-governance academy in Tallin, Estonia – support

Applications used The primary FOSS applications used in the project are divided in two major groups: Group 1. Existing FOSS applications Group 2. New applications, designed and developed specifically for the project's needs. The applications in group one are: GNU/Linux operating system, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and Gimp. As GNU/Linux operating system it was chosen to be used a Bulgarian distribution based on Debian. The distribution's name is ISLD (Interspace Linux Distribution). It was chosen at first place because it is a localized distribution, which was already tested under another project for Linux in Non Government Organizations. It was successfully installed and supported in more than sixty Bulgarian NGOs and was designed especially for end-users that migrate from other operating systems (MS Windows mainly), and need to quickly start working effectively with the new system. Therefore, the distribution is Debian based, which at first place is still considered as the most non-commercial Linux distribution, and its maintenance is relatively easy in comparison with the other distributions. The used Graphical User Interface (GUI) is GNOME, because it is completely translated and localized into Bulgarian and it almost fully localized in

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --Albanian, Macedonian and Turkish which is important when talking about software installations in Public Administrations. This distribution has support in Bulgaria and there are a number of experienced experts, distributed around the country that are able to provide support. OpenOffice.org was chosen to be implemented as the best open source office product that is currently available and can be used both on Linux and Windows operating systems. It has advanced features and similar to Microsoft Office interface, so it is not so hard for the end users to switch to this product. What is more, it is free, and needs almost no support. Localized versions of OpenOffice.org are available at all languages that were needed to the project. It has also the important feature of exporting documents in .pdf which is important for Public Administrations in order to provide platform and end-software independent documents (with minimum requirements for the end-users). OpenOffice.org also supports different file formats so it could be compatible with the major part of the already created documents. Like OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox was chosen to be installed because it can run in an identical way both on Linux and Windows (Apple MAC are not popular in the Balkans region, but the products run also on MACs). In the other hand, Mozilla Firefox has improved security in comparison to Internet Explorer, which was of critical importance for the municipalities, where one of the major IT problems are the huge amount of viruses. Firefox is localized at part of the languages needed in the project, which is a great advantage comparing with Internet Explorer, which is not available localized. GIMP was chosen to be installed because the municipalities have the need to work with graphical images (e.g. to maintain their websites) but the commercial products are too expensive to be bought, so there was no alternative for the local authorities – they had either to use pirate software, or not to work with image processing software. GIMP allowed a wider choice and offered the possibility to legally have a good program to serve their needs. Furthermore, the GTK is localized and the main program is in progress of localization which is a unique feature, that is not offered by the other, commercially available products. There were initially intentions to install as an email client Mozilla Thunderbird but it appeared that the majority of the municipalities, taking part in the project did not have a mail server so it was considered that the product can be installed at further stage. The second group of applications were developed specifically for the needs of the municipalities and provide possibilities for interactive communication between the authorities and the citizens. It was developed a web services portal that provides certain e-services online and improve the process of creating an effective e-government. This was chosen to be done, because in the Balkans region, mainly the central administration is developing e-government solutions that are not applicable in most of the cases at municipal level. What is more, before this project there were no freely available e-government applications (web systems) that could be replicated at little or at no cost in other administrations. The web services portal developed allowed easy and cheap (or even free) multiplication in all municipalities that declared interest to use it, as well as, it is easily customizable, both in terms of web interface and functionality, and is multilingual. Currently the web services portal is installed in 5 municipalities under the project, it offers six services online which are to be extended in the next weeks with 7 more that include usage of digital signatures.

Design specifications Regarding all applications used – both existing and newly developed ones – the main requirement was to be localized, because in most of the countries participating in the project there is a regulation, which states that the Public Administrations has to use only localized products. The web services portal that was developed had to comply with the following specifications: – to be platform independent – which includes both the client and the server side (e.g. Different browsers compatible; all operating systems compatible, etc. ). This could be guaranteed only by using free and open source software products and projects. – To be multilingual – in order to be easily replicated in municipalities not only from the pilot country, and to be able to offer services at the language of certain ethnic minorities. New languages can be

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe ---

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easily added by translating a simple language text file, containing all the strings that are used. Each language can be switched on and off, so one customized web services portal can offer either several language interfaces, or one, or as many as the end-user (the municipality) wants. To be with modular structure – as long as it has a wide range of functions like offering e-services online, news publishing, frequently asked questions sections, etc. it was necessary to allow each municipality to decide which functions to use. It appeared that not every municipality had a website, so the web services portal could be easily use as a primary municipal web page, or as a complement to an existing one, integrating only the functionality that was missing. Easily extensible – based on the modular structure, and providing that only few services were launched initially, the web services portal has to possess the ability new services to be added relatively easy. Currently, seven more services are going to be integrated. Customizable web design – as long as each municipality with an existing website has its own website design, the web services portal has to offer the ability to be easily redesigned in order that when needed, to be used as part of an existing website and to look as and integral part of the municipal website. Easy installation/Easy transferable – to be installed without having to make specific configurations, nor changing security or other components. Open source components usage only – as long as the project is treating the implementation and migration to FOSS, is is inadmissible to use proprietary or closed software components. Regarding the interface, the web services portal had to have three types of interfaces – for the citizens, for the municipality staff and for the administrator of the system. Each interface provides different privileges and options, that are necessary only for the specific users. For example, the municipal employees have the functionality to receive, process and change status of documents, sent or requested by the citizens but in order to send a request to the municipality, the employees have to be logged in as 'citizen' and not 'employee'. The employees have the possibility also to send a reply to the citizen, requesting for more information, changes, or notifying that a service has been accomplished. Only the system administrator has the privilege to create, modify and delete users, as well as, maintain or improve some system features. In order to use the services, the citizens has to register with some personal data which is necessary for several purposes – first, to receive minimum fake inquiries; to auto complete the application forms, and to be able to check the person's identity with the municipal database that is not connected in the Internet, but such a check may become necessary in certain cases. Data is stored for statistical purposes also. The used database should be either MySQL or PostgreSQL – currently MySQL is used. Application forms – there had to be designed online application forms for each service, that should be identical to the available on paper ones. The application forms contain all attributes and fields necessary to request the concrete service. The end user (citizen, employee or administrator) has the options to generate a print preview of the filled in document, to print it, or to export it as a pdf. From another point of view, the end user has the options while filling in the application forms to save it, or the generate a preview, or to send it to the municipal employee. After that, the citizens can trace the progress of processing his service, as well as to receive an online copy of the answer from the municipality. As mentioned above, the citizen can receive requests from the municipal employees in order to provide additional information, or to change some data from its application if it was not submitted properly.

The general idea of the system design was the web services portal to be of maximum usage for maximum number and types of municipalities allowing them to use the solution for free and customizing it according to their specific needs.

End client usage model

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --It was used a mixed model of using every 'component' installed. There were made migrations to GNU/Linux in almost every municipality participating in the project, but migration was made on those computers that did not run specific applications (like financial programs, designed to work only in MSDOS). The Linux distribution was installed as dual boot, set up to work in local area network, with SAMBA daemons to connect to Windows sharings in order to be compatible and to allow communication with computers connected in the network, but running on Windows. As long as the municipalities in the Balkans countries in most of the cases are not interconnected (there is no communication infrastructure to connect via Internet two municipalities for example), the model that was used was based only on local network connectivity. In order to ensure the usage of Linux, special trainings were provided, during which there were explained the benefits of the distribution, as well as it was stressed that working in Internet under Linux will resolve the problems with viruses which seemed to be a significant reason for the employees to work with it. About the model used for the web services portal, initially it was planned that its core was centralized, and every municipality had to be able to connect to the server. However, it appeared that for a number of reasons (legal restrictions, lack of necessary infrastructure, etc.) it was not possible such solution. For this purpose, currently, for each municipality it is set up a separate copy of the system. It can be hosted either by the municipality, or by Internet Society – Bulgaria (currently hosts the web services portal of the pilot municipality of Kardjali, and the rest of the municipalities host the portal by themselves). This provides an excellent opportunity to respond to a wider range of municipal needs, and to allow to even smaller municipalities to benefit from the solution. The hosting that Internet Society – Bulgaria is providing is free for the municipalities and a subdomain in the foss.bg area is also provided. OpenOffice.org, Firefox and GIMP were installed on the client machines, as separate installations. Due to the big number of old computers used in the municipalities, and the fact that in not all the municipalities there was assured full connectivity to the Internet and the local area network, it was not possible to use a centralized approach and access to applications through the network. However, for the web services portal, at least the people from the document flow department has to possess with Internet and LAN connection in order to work and process the e-services. It can be summarized, that for each different municipality participating in the project it was used a custom approach to allow most effective usage of FOSS and the applications installed under the project. The common model used was: – Linux installed for desktop usage, as dual boot, only on part of the computers(workstations). – OpenOffice.org installed on every workstation – Mozilla Firefox installed on every workstation with connection to the network and/or Internet – GIMP installed on every workstation that has the minimum installation requirements – Web services portal installed on web server – either a municipality one, or Internet Society – Bulgaria's one – Access to the web portal through the Internet/LAN.

Hardware and software used The Linux operating system deployed, as stated above, is ISLD which is a Bulgarian, Debian based distribution. It contains only the most necessary packages for a simple end-user (there is no movie, gaming, or other irrelevant to the municipal needs software). However, if the end-user needs, additional applications can be installed from the ISLD repositories or the Debian repositories. The user interface is customized and provides quick access to the most used applications like browser, office suite, etc. The distribution is with specifically set privileges, in order to allow the end user to make some customizations (like change layout, login screens, personalize settings, etc.) without prompting for root password but for settings that may cause undesired or unexpected result password is required. The work with the console is necessary only in very special cases. This is made in order that the Linux beginner users do not have to change their habits, and to make the Linux distribution both friendly and working as expected. The ISLD distribution appeared to be very suitable for the project's needs because it was already tested with more

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --than 60 NGOs, including Internet Society – Bulgaria, experts for its support were available, and packages and specific repositories were available too. Furthermore, guidelines and manuals in Bulgarian became available during the project execution, as well as, it allowed to be used local labor hand, thus expanding the benefits of FOSS usage. The OpenOffice.org versions installed were several – from 1.0.3 to 1.1.4 – depending on the workstations configurations. The version of Mozilla Firefox that was initially installed was the 0.8 but during the project progress it was upgraded everywhere to 1.0.3. Currently the system administrators have the responsibility to upgrade these applications. The version of GIMP used was 2.0. The web services application runs with PHP 4, MySQL 4 and usually, with Apache 2.0. Specific hardware was not bought or installed during the project, because the main goal was to use already existing infrastructure and to build over it to demonstrate the advantages and flexibility of FOSS solutions.

Motivation to choose open source FOSS was chosen at first place to demonstrate that local e-government initiatives can be more efficient and at less cost if using open source, instead of proprietary software. The municipalities in the Balkans region do not have enough budget to handle their regions functioning properly, and therefore, they have no funds to invest for software licenses. In Bulgaria, for the public administrations there are available software licenses for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, but their installation requires good hardware, which the majority of municipalities do not possess. Any investment regarding buying hardware is almost impossible, not only for the Bulgarian municipalities, but also for the neighbor countries. FOSS has less requirements regarding its installation and usage, so the local administrations could benefit from effective an legal software that comes at no cost. At second place, FOSS allowed to use a wider range of localized applications, enabling even to switch between various interface languages with one installation only. Next, FOSS allowed to be used local experts which was very important for the project, having in mind that migration activities were executed in several Balkan countries. In Bulgaria, for the application maintenance there were used Bulgarian experts, both from the non-governmental sector and from the municipalities (thus involving all stakeholders), in Macedonia there were used Macedonian experts, trained by the project staff, etc. This allowed to demonstrate that investments can be made better for using local labor hand and improve the skills of local people. For the web services portal it was chosen FOSS, because it allowed multiplication of the developed solution freely, at no cost for licensing, with no specific hardware or commercial software requirements. As long as in the majority of Southeast European countries e-government is in process of development, such solution allows to quickly maximize the results and achievements in the fields with minimum efforts. At last, but not least important place, the Balkans countries are famous with the high level of illegal software used. Spreading the usage and the idea of FOSS helps to reduce this problem and to create local industries that base their work on FOSS products.

Problem addressed The main problem with the municipalities from the Southeast European region regarding ICT is the lack of funds to buy hardware and legal software. Furthermore, as long as only the latest versions of the commercial software used for which there are licenses are localized, this leads to additional problems. At one hand the municipalities are obliged to use licensed and localized software, but at the other hand they have no suitable hardware to use it on. What is more, for any long-term support, the administrations need to pay significant amount of money for external and foreign experts, which is not cost effective for budget structures with scarce resources. It is very common the situation when the government distributes among

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --the local authorities thousands of licensed copies of certain software, but these are not used because only few computers in the bigger municipalities can run it. The majority of smaller municipalities have very old hardware configurations, and much more problems to spend money on than thinking on new hardware. The only solution except installing FOSS is to receive donations but actually this is also not a frequent practice in the region. About the e-government solutions, the problem addressed is that the currently available ones are mainly designed for the central administration only and are not applicable at local level. What is more, these solutions require from the citizens and the end-users to install specific proprietary software in order to use the governmental services, and to have the latest versions of this concrete proprietary software in order to send documents to the government in electronic way. Furthermore, the governmental solutions require the usage of digital signatures that are also at very high cost and in the end it results that usually, only several businesses companies that have enough budget can afford to communicate in electronic way with the institutions. There are rare examples of citizens to send electronic documents to the government and in most cases, it is done using illegal software.

Solution to the problem FOSS helps to deal with the above stated problems in a very elegant and efficient manner. First, it deals with the localization problem because there exist in the region big teams and communities to translate the end-user software, and to keep the latest versions of it at the country's official language(s) too. Second, FOSS allows the end-users, and the administrations to possess legal products, that can run on slower hardware configurations and not necessarily requiring to be updated each year in order to receive support of new features for it. The administrations can use an up-to-date software at almost no cost, keeping the possibilities to receive support at little cost or even train local people to do it. The municipalities can also customize the software they are using keeping their software actual, without upgrading their hardware. Regarding the stated problems with the electronic services and the online communication with the government, FOSS is a very good opportunity to deal with the problem. As long as in the Balkan countries the citizens usually do not have money to buy software and do not have the habit and manner of thinking to pay for it, but are likely to use modern technologies to communicate with the government, they have to either use illegal versions or use FOSS. The web services portal developed under this project does not oblige the end-users to use any specific software – they need only a web browser that could be any. As long as FOSS is usually connected with open standards, it allows a flexible manner of keeping minimum requirements to the end-user. The FOSS based web portal developed enables a big number of small, medium and large municipalities to interact with their citizens with no specific requirements and not obliging the end user to pay for some kind of software. It is a question about choice – the citizens can use whatever software components they like and this will not be an obstacle do communicate with the authorities. Therefore, after the migrations to OpenOffice.org in several municipalities, the citizens are allowed to send documents in almost any kind of document formats, no important the version of the software they are using. This can be considered a significant improvement in the manner of communication between local authorities and the citizens, which finally allows to result in better quality of services and confidence in the authorities. The problem with the low level of foreign language knowledge among the municipal employees was solved by the installations of localized end-user software. This is a permanent problem in the small municipalities in Bulgaria, as the average age of the employees is over 35 -40 years, knowledge of English language is low due to the past political system in the country and the problem with the migration of young people to the big cities. Installations of OpenOffice.org translated to the local language at the municipal computers at last motivated the employees to use computers not just as a typewriter, but to explore more advanced features.

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --The problem with the reduced local budgets for ICT is permanent in Bulgaria. Most of the small municipalities receives old used computers as a donations from the local banks. However, even the slow computers can be used with the installed Linux and OpenOffice.org, as the provided software does not require expensive upgrades. The problem with the software licenses is not an issue too. Moreover, the small municipalities often has very low on no budget for software licenses, and if they want to have legal copies of proprietary software, they are forced to cut from the infrastructure investments for example. It is a big dilemma for the mayors, and one of the reasons for the week IT infrastructure in the municipalities of the small towns. The software updates for the free open source software are recent and regular, and mainly free of charge for the common software, allowing to keep municipalities with up do date software, but also to find additional useful software for specific needs. Besides, the enormous documentation and teaching materials available online may help system administrators to develop their professional skills, and to exchange knowledge and /or to receive specific problems' solution from the Linux gurus' community. The main problem of each system administrator – security and network viruses is solved in its biggest part too. As the municipality employees are not experienced users, viruses are a big issue. With the installed Mozilla Firefox browser on MS machines part of the problem was solved – reducing the viruses from Internet by the browser. But still remains the problem with the viruses, received by the email on MS Windows computers. Security on the migrated to Linux computers was increased too, both from illegal external attacks, but also from internal damage from the end-users, as they are not able to remove important or install harmful software components. One more issue issue is very important and connected with the adoption and usage of FOSS. This is the opportunity to be established public-private partnership within the local ICT market. The local software development companies could be engaged in the processes of migration, training both for the municipality employees and system administrators, and development of additional applications. This will increase the turnover growth in the local IT sector, which could lead to employment encouragement. Finally, the provided solution for e-services made the municipal work more transparent and lowered the corruption at low level.

Systems deployed The project took place in 9 municipalities from the Balkans region (Bulgaria – Kardjali, Vratza, Mezdra, Peshtera, Belovo, Dryanovo, Kostenetz; Macedonia – Gevgelija; Kosovo - Klina). As a total, OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox were installed on 200 workstations which formed a percentage from at least 50% to 100% in every municipality that took part in the project. Linux was installed on 45 client workstations, which formed between 16% and 25% in a municipality (depending on its size). The web services portal was installed in 4 municipalities (Kardjali, Vratza, Mezdra and Peshtera) from which the Kardjali one is hosted on Internet Society – Bulgaria's server, and the rest – on their own municipal servers. There was expressed wish from a higher number of municipalities to deploy both the web services portal and the Linux, OpenOffice.org and Mozilla applications, but the project budget did not allow their inclusion due to insufficient travel and personnel funds. The total number of such municipalities that could not be included in the project is more than 20 which leads to the conclusion that a prolongation of the project could have a major impact and bigger effect.

Benefits from FOSS deployment A lot of valuable experience have been gained during the whole period of the Project. The gained knowledge about Linux and OpenOffice.org helped Internet Society - Bulgaria to become wanted

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --experts in the field and to present achievements at international conferences and events, by presentations, case studies, publications, etc. The result of the public awareness of the project reflected both beneficial to the organization, but also for the common well of Bulgaria – the country was quoted widely as a pilot initiative for the region and received excellent feedback from the international FOSS community. In order to exchange know-how, experts from Open Society Institute – Assistance Foundation in Azerbaijan visited Internet Society - Bulgaria. They were starting similar project in Azerbaijan and asked about our experience in implementing FOSS Project. The experts took part in the training of employees in Kardjali, who will be responsible to work with the documents, received by the website for e-services. Later, experts from similar OSI funded FOSS Project in Georgia contacted us again to obtain some guidelines and practice for the migration processes. The experts accompanied our migration mission in the municipality of Belovo. The last group of experts, this time from the newly started in Tajikistan E-Riders Project visited Internet Society – Bulgaria in order to collect our experience with Linux and OpenOffice.org migrations. From the other side, Internet Society – Bulgaria, in its role of Implementing agency for the Project received a lot of invitations for partnership in different similar projects and initiatives. Gathered know how from this Project was the basis for further ideas. As an example for knowledge transfer from one project to other can be used the latest initiative, started by Internet Society Bulgaria - “Enhancing service delivery, social protection and livelihood support for the poor through ICT”, funded by the UN Poverty Reduction Trust Fund New York. Software knowledge of the experts, working within the Internet Society -Bulgaria is increasing constantly, as they need extensive knowledge on ICT in order to be able to assist implementation, to evaluate opportunities, to analyze options and task approach. According to the vast experience with FOSS, Internet Society -Bulgaria was invited to participate in the consultation of the development of a draft amendment to the “Access to Public Information” Act. The amendment's provisions are faced to adoption of open standards in the structures of the Public Administration and in the State portals and websites. State authorities should be obligated to use open file formats in their computer information systems, says the draft amendment. A definition of open format was given in the new article 5 of the amendment: ”a description of the methods of preservation and exchange of data, accessible for each person, who wants to observe, use and implement; which does not commit the user with any software producer, or provides commercial advantages for certain software producers; which gives equal usage opportunities to the public, without payment of license fees; which allows modifications and development of derivative forms under the above mentioned terms”. The systems and software solutions deployed represent a first, massive effort in Southeastern Europe to introduce free and open source software to Public Administrations in this region. Therefore, this project may be considered as the pilot, that laid down the grounds for further and wider implementation of FOSS at more levels, both in the Administrations (including the central and regional administrations) and the businesses. It demonstrated in the region, that FOSS solutions are not a “hacker” product, and can be used efficiently to accomplish the majority of common tasks that a middle end-user has to perform without serious troubles. The web services portal that was developed and deployed is the first one in the region that is open source and provides the possibility for interactive communication between the citizens and local administrations in the context of the development of e-government. It is also unique in the sense that this is a bigger effort to use the public-private partnerships model to benefit the local economies and preserve local skills and capacities. It is known that the Balkans countries have very good IT experts but in the last years the better ones emigrate. This project provides the opportunity to preserve local experts with specific knowledge and skills in the country, and even keep them employed in the smaller municipalities, where people normally migrate to larger cities to get job.

Impact 11

Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe ---

After the implementation of the project, it was assured a platform for higher cooperation between the Local administrations and the business, in particular with non-government organizations and SMEs. This means, that the public-private partnerships model was enabled efficiently through Free and Open Source software. As long as, initially the support for the applications installed was provided by Internet Society – Bulgaria (which is a public not for profit organization) and several consultants, currently the administrations can choose their own support, which is frequently done by young students from Higher Educational Institutions, or pupils from Mathematics schools. The other frequent approach is to use help from local companies, established in the municipal city in order to receive support and to further expand/change some features. This results in enhanced local cooperation at business level, as well as the level of local IT skills is continuously raising. At the other hand, as long as the project is implemented within a wider UNDP initiative - “Capacity development through knowledge sharing and development: Free/open source software for developing countries” , the deployment and the project activities can be used as a case study where migrations to FOSS are made in more than one country, part from the Balkans region. This is one of the first major initiatives in the region, so it definitely has impact regarding sharing lessons, experiences and multiplication of the results. The project technical coordinator was even invited to share the project results and approaches used in Kazakhstan where directly after that started discussion on implementing open source at governmental level. Furthermore, according to recent information, published in Slashdot.org, 5000 computers in Macedonian schools will migrate to Linux and the initiative is of the movement “Free Software Macedonia”. An important to mention fact is that this news appear 2 months after the currently described project had presentation in Macedonia, and the project team discussed the approach used with this organization. So, in summary, besides the direct impact resulting in better partnerships and cooperation between local administrations and the local private sector, there can be found many indirect effects from the project, which are hardly to be estimated, but are undoubtedly valuable for the further FOSS adoption in the region.

Lessons learned 

The main factor for success of Free/open source software initiatives and project is the development of policy and legislation towards it. Without political support, the processes and adoption are slowed.

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The low level of computer literacy among the municipal employees over 30 years could be a serious problem, due to the lack of understanding of the benefits from the migration. The recommended steps are meetings with the system administrators at the preliminary talks. The migration should be followed immediately by relevant trainings. If an opportunity for testing and certification is available – it would be very helpful.

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Always make certification after the training – it may be just a diploma for the passed trainings, or better a certification tests for the level of knowledge of the products. People would be much more motivated to use software, for which they have an official document, certifying they are capable and skilled to use.

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Public awareness aspect is very important for the implementation of the project, media coverage of the activities and the work done is of importance. As of the specific moods in Bulgaria, organizing public awareness events with internationally known figures receives much more media attention and response.

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Collaborative work with the local FOSS supporting organizations and international ones is a must.

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Do not limit the development and implementation of the FOSS Project strictly to the initially planned outputs. If there is an opportunity to wider the impact of the Project, or you find there are

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --important functionality to embed in the developed tools and applications, do not hesitate to do so. 

Develop a mechanism for fund raising for the Project

Current project status The performed statistics on the usage of the web services portal in Kardjali and Vratza, showed much higher interest from the citizens (in comparison to other similar websites running in other municipalities in Bulgaria). This is a sign, that the project results had been adopted very well by the citizens. The statistic is available upon a request. As the FOSS Project is in its last phase, the following tasks are scheduled to be completed: To continue awareness on the F/OSS project in the neighboring countries. The Municipality of Bahchelievler in Istanbul, Turkey sent a letter of intent to participate and benefit from the Project at the last moment. It was stated that the Municipality would like to take advantage from and adopt free and open source software. Therefore, it is scheduled until the end of January 2006, FOSS Project in cooperation with UNDP Turkey to extend the initiative, by providing the relevant migrations and trainings and to prepare a requirements analysis and draw a deployment plan hot to migrate their computational infrastructure, wite a "good practices" report, adding good/bad experiences. The other important task just accomplished was the development of the additional e-government services with digital signature. Design of the interface and integration of the 7 (seven) additional e-Government services, working with digital signature just finished. For the additional services, included in the Municipal web services portal Kardjali Municipality, an IMAP/SMTP Server has been set upped and tested, in order to accept forms for the digital signature signed services. Downloadable forms for issuing of described in the TOR services, created in several file formats: Plain Text in both utf-8 and cp1251 character encodings; Rich Text Format; Open Office 1.0; Open Document Text Format. Successful print tests have been made from the following platforms. The platforms cover the expected range of needs both for municipality and the citizens according to used operation systems, applications and print potential.

Advantages and disadvantages from using free and open source software The main advantages from using Linux was that it was allowed a dramatic reduction of the viruses in the local area network in the municipalities. The end users were trained that it would be better for them and for the municipality when browsing in Internet to use Linux, which can be considered a big success, as long as this is a serious problem in any administration. The municipal employees were able to improve their IT skills and to use software in their local language. With the solutions installed it was allowed money to be saved and invested for making the municipal cities better. The web services portal's main advantage is that it puts no restrictions or requirements regarding the software platform used in order to communicate in an effective way with the municipalities. Using OpenOffice.org not only allowed to reduce costs in perspective on software licenses, but also allowed the employees to run good office program, localized in their language on older machines. It allowed also exports to PDF to be made and to eliminate any restrictions regarding file formats of the documents received. The migration to Mozilla Firefox enable to raise the security in the municipalities, keeping all necessary functionality that is needed when browsing in Internet, and adding additional one. The main disadvantage of the dual-boot installation of Linux was that in case that the employees wanted to safely work in the Network and in Internet, they had to reboot under Linux but they did not have the habit to do so. For them it was hard to understand as an end user why to switch the operating system. Also, for the system administrators it was difficult to learn how to administer Linux and needed more efforts both from training experts, and from the administrators in order to get skilled. The work in terminal mode is not very

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --popular and makes people be afraid from using it because it looks to them somehow 'too hacker's' while for Linux administration it is not possible to avoid the console. Regarding the disadvantages of OpenOffice.org, the major ones were the common problems – the incompatibility with macros, created in Excel in Visual Basic. The other problem was sometimes bad or incorrect formatting of Microsoft Word documents. Another disadvantage is that OpenOffice.org loads slower than Microsoft Office, although after loaded, their productivity and speed performance are the same. There were some difficulties with some special formatting tools of the OpenOffice.org word processing and spreadsheet progams – for users experienced with MS Office, it was a bit confusing to switch to the alternative solution as the sub-menus have sometimes different names and the functions are rearranged. About Mozilla Firefox, there were no disadvantages found. About the web services portal solution, something that was considered as disadvantage by the end-users (particularly the citizens), was the need of registration – they could not understand why is registration needed in order to send an application form to the municipality. Another disadvantage, that is difficult to overcome is the difference in the legal procedures for the same services in the neighbor countries. Modifications has to be made in order to make some of the services compliant with the regulations in Macedonia, or Kosovo for example.

Surprises and challenges The biggest surprise was that the municipal employees, no matter in which country from the region had very little or no computer literacy. The statistics from the trainings that were performed after each deployment and migration, showed that more than 50% of the staff in every municipality has never been at a computer literacy course. About 30% of the employees that stated that have been at such a course, appeared to have passed it about five or ten years ago, working on MS-DOS or Word 95, which in our case could not be considered significant knowledge. However, every employee of these had a computer with connection to Internet, but part of them had significant problems on working with the PCs. The second major surprise was that only about 5% of all employees trained under the project (about 200) did not know any foreign language but are using software in different language (in most of the cases, in English). This was a big contradiction and surprise because it is difficult to imagine a person that have never been trained how to work with a computer, to work in an administration, using software in language that he does not know. It is interesting to mention that these facts were common to absolutely every municipality that took place in the project – the Bulgarian, the Macedonian and the Kosovo's results were the same. Most likely, the results from a possible implementation in Romania or Turkey would show the same results. These facts are very surprising having in mind all the efforts from the central administrations in these countries to buy software and in rare cases, hardware, to improve the ICT. It appears that the first thing needed should be trainings and localization because the municipal employees have less computer skills than their clients – the citizens and the business. The biggest challenge of the project is directly related with the stated above surprises. During the trainings there were cases in which the trained employees had difficulties in working with the mouse, or the keyboard while it was supposed from them to accomplish serious tasks. These facts raised during the Linux trainings and made the process of training very difficult because the municipal staff had to be trained “from scratch” on how to work with the computer. At the other hand, there was a resistance from the employees to adopt working in localized interface. As long as they do not know foreign languages, and the majority have poor computer skills, they learned by heart some operations and clicks while working with a specific program. So, when facing a comprehensive interface, the majority did not know how to work with the programs, although they were able to understand the meaning of the commands and options. So, in summary, the biggest challenge was the training process, because the employees had to be trained not only on how to work with a new operating system or program, or environment, but also to be trained on

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --very basic things such as how to work with a mouse, what is a document, what is a spreadsheet used for, etc. The employees had also some strange bad habits that the project team had to deal with like saving a number of documents in one single file and if this file corrupts, there start problems, etc. Actually, the employees needed a systematic and full training on computer skills.

Other relevant information As a result of the experience during the FOSS Project, Internet Society Bulgaria will continue working to popularize usage of free/open source software, especially at the administration level. Given that local municipalities usually have very reduced budgets and cannot invest in the development of such Information Society initiatives suggests that the focus needs to be most-effective, replicable and adaptable systems and the provision of affordable connectivity to get access to such information. Increasing the computer literacy in obvious and a must not only for the success of such an approach but also for citizens to be better prepared for job requirements in the new information society. The project main goal is to develop a web services portal in order to serve the needs of the local labor bureaus. This portal aims to create collaboration with three key stakeholders: job seekers, employers and SMEs. The initiative to be implemented as a part of the existing municipal web services portal in the target pilot municipality. A collaborative and coordinated approach of this kind being proposed here accompanied by training and job enhancement for local municipality personnel can not only improve service delivery but reduce the element of bureaucracy for common citizens. The main benefit is the realization of the opportunity to contact and exchange information with the local labor bureau through the Internet. This will affect in increasing the level of Internet usage as overall, but in long term this web-portal could be a base for more comprehensive e-government services, including e-payments. As a whole, at local level in Bulgaria, electronic communication with the authorities is both now well developed and not very popular. At some places, municipal web presence is missing at all. The project aims to bridge this gap by both creating a web-based application, which will serve online the need of authorities and citizens, but also to train certain categories of people how to use the technologies and Internet in particular. Given the need for a modular set of tools which are also replicable, adaptable and cost effective, an open source and open-content approach would seem to be in order and would also allow for building on existing municipal ICT infrastructure and info-structures. The use of open standards and free/open source software (FOSS) is expected to have a positive impact in many directions, with benefits for the government, citizens and local SMEs that can potentially provide maintenance, development and training support. In the longer -term, this approach is expected to lead to the generation of huge budget savings. More specifically, the following are some of the expected benefits from the development and implementation of FOSS based platform:  increase in the transparency of the social department’s work and generation of savings in local budgets;  reduced costs and dependency on imported software and skills;  support to the European integration processes by a quicker and potentially more effective bridging of the existing “digital” divide between South-eastern European states and the European Union at large;  ability to customize software for local languages and cultures provide opportunities to software developing SMEs to collaborate with the administration;  ensure open access to the population through the web. Once the free/open source (FOSS) tools are developed they can be easily replicated in other municipalities in Bulgaria and/or in other parts of the Eastern Europe. Moreover, the tools can be modified, allowing for additional functionality and add-ons, continuous development and localization for other countries.

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Support to e-Government initiatives based on the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) at the local (municipality) level in the South-eastern Europe --Sharing the knowledge The main developed application under the FOSS Project – the web services portal – can be freely obtained by anybody who wishes to use it. The source code and installation instructions can be requested by email ([email protected]) or phone from the Internet Society - Bulgaria, and soon it will be available also for download under GNU/GPL license. The web services portal can be provided as an archive file and it can be customized either by the user or by Internet Society – Bulgaria. Other available materials, which could be shared upon a request are the Quarterly progress reports of the FOSS Project, which are prepared on each 4 months passed of the Project. These reports contain summaries of main achievements for the calendar quarter covered, report on activities by project output and activities as per the Annual Project Work Plan (table), challenges, opportunities and lessons learned during the calendar quarter, main planned activities for the next quarter (table). Quarterly progress reports show the time schedule of the Project, connected with the activities and phases, as well as the logical steps taken in order to accomplish the given Project Outputs. Produced Quarterly Reports during the Project are as follows:  Quarter 3 – 2004 Progress report  Quarter 1 – 2005 Progress report  Quarter 2 – 2005 Progress report  Quarter 3 – 2005 Progress report Available online is the Report to the Steering Committee of the FOSS Project produced at the end of 2004, six months after the start of the Project. The document is available at: http://foss.bg/f/Report_SC_FOSS_project_Dec2004.pdf In addition, we are ready to answer specific questions on the project's implementation and to share our experience with interested persons and organization.

Key persons who can provide testimonials about the project           

Mr. Raul Zambrano – Senior ICT for Development Policy Adviser, Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP, [email protected] Mr. Krassimir Benevski – UNDP Bulgaria, Programme Officer, [email protected] Mr. Veni Markovski – Project Manager, Internet Society – Bulgaria, [email protected] Mr. Yuri Mishnikov, ICTD Adviser, Bratislava Regional Center, [email protected] Mr. Hasan Azis – mayor of the municipality of Kardjali (Bulgaria); [email protected] Mr. Momchil Mladenov – deputy mayor of the municipality of Vratza (Bulgaria), [email protected] Mr. Stefan Dimotikaliev – Chief Secretary of the municipality of Peshtera (Bulgaria), [email protected] Mr. Shpend Selimi – Operations Manager in UNDP Kosovo, about Klina (Kosovo), [email protected] Mrs. Matilda Dimovska – Programme Officer in UNDP Macedonia about Gevgelija (Macedonia); [email protected] Mr. Vladimir Petkov – Interspace E-Rider Project Manager, [email protected], Installations and training consultant under the FOSS Project Julia Velkova – FOSS Project Technical Coordinator, [email protected]

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