It’s Day One of GOSCON and we’re about to start our distributed discussion “Global Dialogue on the Impact of Open Source Software in Transforming Government”. Marcos Vinicius Ferreira Mazoni shared these comments on the sustained government initiative in Brazil to use open source and open standards – proprietary software not excluded. Comments include his views the value of collaboration and knowledge-sharing amongst nations. Here is the full text of his speech:
“I will talk about the Brazilian free software perspective and strategy.
We’ve been working with the principle of knowledge acquiring and management as strategy. Much more than with the principle of saving resources or simply comparing software prices. Our commitment is with our knowledge and our intelligence.
We are knowledge resourceful in our country and we are investing in the leading edge knowledge of how technology evolves and how this evolution impacts our information systems and the way they are built.
Our governments are heavy users of information systems. In fact we have one of the highest information systems dependency levels in the whole world. We ought to deal with multiple platforms both user and server sides. The best way for us to operate in such a scenario without become vendor-dependent is to adopt an approach that combines free software and standards.
Standards play a key role in our software development policy and free software provide us with mainstream tool to comply with those standards.When we build free software based solutions we are promoting further knowledge and fostering our country’s building abilities. This is our relation with free software world and from this relation comes cooperation.
Free Software is as sustainable as more people cooperate sharing information and knowledge working for the same goal. Thus we are building permanent a free knowledge network in South America, Latin America, Europe, USA and whichever country that would be committed to share this will, including Africa and Oceania.
Our belief is that our knowledge grows solid and stronger as more and more people and nations players work together and more ability we will have to provide responses to our demanded needs. Through that way we will reach joint development among those players or derive development from others’ achievements. This is the more appropriate way to define free software and standards under our point of view.
Clearly we have expressive savings once we adopt free software and since it is possible to reuse open source software we are also able to accelerate our processes. But the essential part of our free software policy is the mankind ability to excel technology.
This excellence allows a non-dependent evolution process, since free software leverages all players at the topmost level of knowledge and technology with no industry driven lag or handicap but the possibility to choose their best options as good as “best” may get.
The develop nations in technology and those currently in development are all facing the same conditions to benefit from the mankind’s achievements and evolution. This is the underlying reason why we are working in Brazil for very strong adoption of free software in our “telecenters”, schools, health facilities as much as in the Brazilian e-gov as a whole.
Brazilian e-gov infrastructure is based in FOSS. This won’t forbid or refrain us to use propietary or closed software. But our government’s policy, our perspective, is to move further and further into free software world, free knowledge.
That is why is so important to take part in discussions like this. Knowing more people, users, developers we get acquainted to new solutions and partners, strengthening this win-win network.
I’d like to wish you a great GOSCON. I see this kind of dialogue and network building as of the very highest importance and look forward to hear great results from such meeting.
Have a good conference!”Marcos Vinicius Ferreira Mazoni
Bryant Group 
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