The Introduction of OpenOffice.org in the Brussels Public Administration

Open source software is increasingly used by public administrations as an alternative to commercial software. In this paper we present a case study of the transition of the ministerial cabinets of the Brussels-Capital Region towards OpenOffice.org. In this case, the decision to use open source software was taken by the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region. The goal of the paper is to outline the implementation trajectory followed and to compare our findings to previous studies in this field as well as other Information Systems literature. Additionally, we discuss how OpenOffice.org was received by end users as well as the IT department that was responsible for the migration. Our findings indicate that although a migration towards OpenOffice.org is feasible, a number of difficulties still remain. For example, end user perceptions of OpenOffice.org are not always favorable and migration costs (document conversion and training) can be significant.

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