Although a lot of work has been done already, many IT departments in public administrations continue to struggle with these topics. Based on my experience as former head of the team responsible for the implantation of the European Commission's IDBAC programme and my current contacts as OpenForum Academy fellow, I will discuss the following topics:

- Public procurement, IT architecture, interoperability and the use of standards
- The European public procurement legislation and the use of open source software and the acquisition of open source software related services
- The European legislation on standards and the problems this causes for open source developers, software architects and software procurers
- The construction of custom software paid for by public funds and the 4 freedoms
- Sharing, re-use and co-development of custom software by public administrations; the European Union Public License and its relationship to other open source licenses
- How can public servants be active in existing open source communities
- How to convince the IT service providers to offer to public administrations solutions based on open source software

On each of the topics, interaction with and feedback from the audience will be sought.