As countries around the world modernize their public elections process, the big problem with electronic voting machines is that the market is moving slow to provide equipment which fulfills all of the requirements for a fully democratic election. In many cases, printed proof of a citizen’s vote is still needed, in case the machine has buggy software or if there is suspicion of fraud. This problem, amongst others, are being floated around the voting machine industry. The Secretary of State... Read Full Story
The Brasília Protocol (now translated to English) started the process of implementation of the Open Document Format (ODF) within the Brazilian Government. The Protocol was signed during the opening of CONSEGI 2008 by Bank of Brazil, Serpro, Dataprev, Post Office and Telegraph State Company (ECT), INPE (Institute of Spacial Researches), INPI (Institute of Intellectual Property), Ministry of Exterior Relations and others. All the institutions who signed the protocol are assuming the... Read Full Story
Vator.tv is a social network for technology start-ups to connect with investors. They also host a newsroom which provides technology industry news & analysis. North by South was recently featured with this article: Developing your technology in Latin America: Near-shoring software engineering in Latin America is a side effect of progressive state policies. The article examines the near-shoring potential of Lain America as an unintentional consequence of the socially liberal initiatives that... Read Full Story
In returning from CONSEGI 2008, North by South has been extremely busy keeping up with our schedules and lives here in San Francisco. But, tonight, we’ve taken the time to put together the attention due to CONSEGI here on our news site. CONSEGI 2008 was history being made — we spoke with people from the Latin American Free Software Foundation, public officials from Brazil to South Africa, free software activists struggling to convince their governments to adopt the path forged by Brazil and... Read Full Story
CONSEGI 2008 is over and North by South was honored and excited to have been a participant in this convergence of public free software initiatives from all over Latin America. We are providing here an English-language update of some of the highlights of what we saw and who we spoke with during CONSEGI.
Between all of the presentations and debates about free software usage and policies within government, one of the most important things that came out of this first annual CONSEGI meeting was... Read Full Story
By: rafael Bonifas
The liaisons for the Latin-America’s Free Software Brothers and their African cousin. Right after participating on three days of CONSEGI my understood about Free Software in Latin America has changed a lot. For me each country had a mysterious history with a lot of myths about the success or failure related to the migration to free software. Today I will tell the history of 4 brother’s counties who had bet on using free software inside the government: Brazil, Venezuela... Read Full Story
A more detailed update from the second day of CONSEGI will be forthcoming but this picture is from a panel called “Modelos de Licenciamento para Software Livre” (Free Software Licensing Models), which included Alexandre Oliva from the Latin American Free Software Foundation, Pedro de Rezende (University of Brasilia), Claudio Ruiz Gallardo (Direitos Digitales, a digital rights group from Chile) and moderated by Bruno Souza (Open Source Initiative). Other discussion topics from CONSEGI 2008... Read Full Story
Over 800 people were in attendance in Brasilia for the opening ceremony of CONSEGI as more people continued to stream in throughout the day. According to Sandra Sipp (Coordinator of Social Communication for SERPRO) over 2000 people registered to attend the conference, including high-ranking Brazilian officials such as Minister of Science and Technology Sérgio Rezende, Minister of the General Secretary of the Presidency Luiz Dulci and many other government officials from all over Latin America... Read Full Story
Several of us from the North by South core management team in San Francisco are heading to Brasília, the capital of Brazil, to participate in CONSEGI 2008, the International Congress of Electronic Society and Government, happening August 27 - 29, and we’ll be making daily blog updates about our experiences there. CONSEGI is exclusively about free software implementation by Latin American governments and there will be representatives from countries all over the region. Many of the programmers... Read Full Story
Continuing our series of bringing information about the free software movement in Latin America to English readers, North by South interviewed Cláudio Filho (original in Portuguese), one of the people responsible for starting the OpenOffice.org project in Brazil (pt-BR), known in the country as BrOffice.org. The project started around 2002 and the community in Brazil who supports it has done some great work not only to provide a high-quality office suite to Brazil’s citizens but to also do... Read Full Story
