Federal government agencies are adopting free and open source software (FOSS) with increasing zeal, according to a new study undertaken by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO).

Government CIOs that dismiss open source software because of support issues, which is the case for the Australian Tax Office, Defence and Centrelink, simply do not understand the concept, according to Sun Microsystems.

A visiting Red Hat executive has said that wariness on the part of a number of government CIOs over adopting open source is not a reflection of Australia's tech savvy, but the result of a "lack of understanding" of the software and its community.

17 September 2007 - All government agencies must change to open source software, the national government says in an action plan presented today. Amsterdam is already testing such software and will decide on whether to renew its Microsoft contract in December.

"The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), the leading organization advocating for openness and accessibility to government documents and information, today congratulated Japan for adopting a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards."

More than half of all U.S. government executives have rolled out open-source software at their agencies, and 71 percent believe their agency can benefit from open-source software, according to a survey.

The Dutch government has set a soft deadline of April 2008 for its agencies to start using open-source software -- freely distributed programs that anyone can modify -- the Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said Thursday.

The Liberal Democrats have hit out at the government's failure to use more open source software, three years after it pledged to avoid 'lock-in' to proprietary systems. The government published a policy document, 'Open Source Software: use within UK government' in 2004, promising to consider open source alongside proprietary products in IT procurements...

The New Zealand State Services Commission's (SSC) championing of open-source software in government helped its ICT (Information and Communications Technology) branch pick up an award in the government category of the inaugural New Zealand Open Source Awards, held in Wellington this month.