Nov 4th Today the Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform has announces a tender for the purchase of 60 000 new licenses for Microsoft products by the year 2012. The interesting fact this time is that the order is specifically given for this company’s products. According to the Ministry’s press release, “The few examples of migrations to other platforms show a necessity of serious financial resources, including for retraining of the staff to work with the new software systems, as well as a long enough period of implementation.” What’s wrong with that? „The experts“ don’t have a clue what it is all about. The state will spend millions to purchase those licenses It will oblige our Administration to use this company’s products by 2012 It will give all the data, used or stored by the Administration, in the hands of a commercial organisation It will surrender the management of…

Two civil organizations will approach the prosecutor’s office today. The reason is the new contract, prepared by the Ministry of State Administration, for software purchase, which is going to be signed with Microsoft. This was announced yesterday by /Open Projects Foundation /and the civil initiative /Spravedlivost (Justice)./ The signal to the Prosecutor is instigated by the Ministry’s call for tender, which seeks a supplier of 60 000 Microsoft licenses for the needs of the state administration. According to the lawyer of the two organizations, Mr Ivan Gruykin, the announced procedure may be interpreted as a criminal breach of trust, aiming to favour one of the world’s richest people – Bill Gates and his company. Apart from the Prosecutor, the organizations will approach other authorities as well, namely the Public Internal Financial Control Agency, which according to the Public Tenders Act possesses the power to stop the procedure. The two organizations…