The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, confirmed that he will participate at the open ceremony of CONSEGI (Free Software and Electronic Government International Conference), which will take place at Brasília, August 26 to 28. This will be the second free software event in Brazil that the president participates. In June, Lula visit the International Free Software Forum (FISL) in Porto Alegre, where he met with John “Maddog” Hall, Richard Stallman and other members of the free software community..

It was at Lula’s first mandate (2003) that the use of free software for development of solutions to e-Gov (Electronic Government) became an orientation of the Federal Government. Lula also created the Technical Committee of Implementation of Free Software - CISL, responsible for promoting awareness, training and dissemination of free software in the Public Administration. CISL has already the authorization of Lula to build a public police for free software in Brazil, to generate a change of direction for IT in the country by promoting cooperative work, share of knowledge and skills and therefore help create a more inclusive information society and the development of the country.

During his speech at FISL10, the Brazillian president stated that there is no greater freedom then to ensure the individual freedom and emphasized the importance of providing conditions in which “people can raise their creativity and their intelligence, especially in a new country like Brazil”, land of great creative people. “Finally we have found ourselves. Finally this country is having a taste of freedom of information”.

North by South was at the first edition of CONSEGI last year and we covered the whole event, you can find a summary of articles about it here. It was a very inspiring conference and we are happy to see this second edition coming out. The event is free and open to the public, anyone can go and participate in the panels to be informed about the progress of free software adoption in the Latin American governments.