Financial Services, Latvia, Technology

The Finance Ministry already uses various open source solutions for the maintenance of its IT infrastructure, reports LETA.

As to open source office software, the Finance Ministry points out that it is freeware, which is a positive aspect, however, the maintenance of such software requires additional financial and human resources and re-training of users.

An important factor against such software is the problem of Latvianization of the software.

The Finance Ministry also points out that, for instance, the “Microsoft Office SharePointServer” platform is used extensively in the work of several departments of the ministry. The Finance Ministry points out that there is no analog to this Microsoft platform that would meet the ministry’s criteria and be worth the investments that have already been made into the Microsoft platform. Therefore complete transition to open source software regarding various integrated solutions would be very time consuming or technologically impossible.

Another example is several IT solutions, already implemented, which are based on “Microsoft InfoPath” forms for the management of European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds.

Therefore the Finance Ministry calls on government institutions to appraise their needs and technological capacity for transition to open source software, bearing in mind that this should save money and not bring higher costs along.