The municipal group of Comodilida has expressed its opposition to the new contract for ICT services and telecommunications supplies of the City Council of Lleida, worth more than 9 million euros, and demands a digital migration strategy of open source standards that strengthens the digital sovereignty of the city of Lleida. Public Administration.
Comúdelleida believes that this recruitment must be accompanied by a plan for technological sovereignty for the public sector, in coordination with other local, regional and European administrations, to avoid dependence on large multinational companies such as Microsoft or Cisco Systems.
“We consider it necessary to work on the development and implementation of open source technologies and solutions, which allow a more independent and secure management of citizen data, which ensure interoperability between administrations and between applications, which provide free public administration, and the citizens who use them. Electronic management, from relying on a small number of suppliers“, confirmed Commodilida Councilor Laura Burgess.
Technological dependence and sovereignty
Comúdelleida condemns, as it already did in 2018 when the contract has now ended, the City Council’s technological reliance on proprietary applications, which give a privileged position to a few companies, while limiting the interoperability of municipal digital systems.
“Reliance on large technological conglomerates is neither beneficial for public administration, nor for full protection of the data collected by the administration, nor for local economic development around ICTs.“The councilwoman added.
For this reason, comudelleida emphasizes that working with free software licenses and with code solutions developed by the administration and the local technology sector would allow greater technological sovereignty. “This will not only increase security in the management of confidential citizen data, but will also contribute to greater transparency and control over the tools used“.
In this sense, Commodilida calls for a move towards a more autonomous system, in line with the same Digital Public Services Strategy promoted by the European Union to promote open source solutions for public administration and interoperability between management systems.
“The European Union, but also countries like Italy or France, or municipalities like Munich, Groningen or Barcelona, have been working like this for some time, and we would like Leda to join the innovation train linked to technological sovereignty.Burgess explained.
In this vein, the advisor indicated that the European Union agreed last March to a Regulating interoperability in the public sector Throughout the consortium, it is also committed to open source in the digitization of departments.
Comúdelleida urges the municipal government to reconsider its dependence on big tech companies and their proprietary software and work on a more sustainable and independent model with an internal plan for digital transition towards open source systems and public licenses.
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