Second Bulgarian city migrates to Open Source

After Kardjali, the pilot city for a United Nations Development Programme in South East Europe, the city of Vratza has migrated to open source software thanks to the support of the Internet Society Bulgaria.

Since few months, the municipality of Vratza offers online services based on Free and Open Source Software. The official opening of the web portal was last 15 April 2005. After Kardjali, Vratza is the second Bulgarian city under the United Nations Development Programme “Support to e-government initiatives at local level through free and open source software in South East Europe” to adopt Open Source technology. Municipal computers have been migrated to the free office suite OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox. Using the new e-services portal, which does not require digital signature, citizens are able to submit requests, signal, letter and complaint. The Deputy Mayor, Mr. Mladenov has announced that OpenOffice.org will be installed on the computers in the villages that are part of the municipality of Vratza in order to generate savings from the administration’s budgets.

Supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Internet Society of Bulgaria (ISOC-Bulgaria) the project started in June 2004. By the end of January 2005, six Bulgarian municipalities have started active migration to free and open source software – Kardjali, Peshtera, Vratza, Kostenec, Dryanovo and Belovo.

M.Z

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