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 Venezuela. Seeing it all together, in one place, with people from over the Americas — it was dizzying.
We urge you to begin with our English-language translation of Rafael Bonifaz’s own heart-felt summary: The Free Software Brothers (or you can read it in Spanish: Los Hermanos del Software Libre).
We urge you to check out our other coverage of CONSEGI 2008 (more pictures to come soon, we promise):
Even if Slashdot and the North American free software world hasn’t yet caught on to the enormity of what’s happening in Latin America, it doesn’t matter. Because it’s huge, it’s happening and to be a part of what’s going on as a member of the community is an exciting honor and responsibility.
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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 the CONSEGI Declaration, signed on the conference’s last day by Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Cuba, Ecuador and Paraguay. This declaration is a letter of protest against the ISO/IEC’s rejection of the formal appeal from Venezuela, South Africa, Brazil and India of the ISO vote that approved Microsoft’s OOXML as an international standard.
North-by-South was happy to have the opportunity to sit and talk with Marcos Mazoni, head of the Technical Committee to Implement Free Software in Brazil, about the many issues involving free software in Latin America. He confirmed that CONSEGI will continue to happen next year and that plans are already underway for CONSEGI 2009. Talking about the topic of transparency in the government, which was expressed in many of the painels, Mr Mazoni explained that creation of IT policies in Brazil will include consideration of participatory democracy, enabling the average citizen to follow the governmental actions as they affect people’s lives by making these actions transparent to the public. You can read more about our discussion with Mr Mazoni on our CONSEGI 2008 Summary Page as well as issues such as licensing government-sponsored code and reports on free software initiatives in Argentina, South Africa, Ecuador and Venezuela.
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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 Day Two included production of publicly-owned knowledge, models of governing information technology/communications, and mechanisms of support and innovation in software engineering. While these topics might sound a bit dry, they represent some of the most cutting-edge technology policies that exist throughout the world, compared to the “Washington consensus” model of “bribe, install, wait for Service Pack” :)
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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. The event is free and open for everyone and on the first floor is an all-Linux computer lab. There is also an on-going workshop showing people how to recycle computers by replacing hardware and using free software.
This event is a unique free software gathering in that it is bringing together public officials who have been working hard to implement free software solutions within their governments as a way to benefit society at large. One of the major topics in the debates and panels is how IT solutions can be used to create more transparency between the state and the public it is supposed to serve. These initiatives promote democracy in a way that is truly foreign to many people in the United States in that they use technology to give citizens easy access to information about government funding and work, allowing them to follow it and be a part of the political process that affects their lives.
The second day of CONSEGI includes 14 workshops, a panel about Digital Inclusion projects and presentations about using free software for remote education projects.
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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 in the North by South Developers Network have worked extensively in open source migration and development projects for the governments and state-owned IT firms where they live.
There will be a panel about long distance education systems, to discuss projects like PROINFO from the Brazilian Ministry of Education, a decentralized project to build IT labs inside of state schools to facilitate the education process. Digital inclusion will also be discussed in-depth, led by the well-known Brazilian project maintained by GESAC, which has over 3 thousand computer labs around the country receiving satellite internet, all using free software techonology. There will be workshops on specific software packages, like Asterisk as well as programming languages like PHP.
Many government organizations will be presenting their own unique implementations of free software, including public officials from Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba and more. Other important topics include the Open Document Format and free software licenses. The goal is to not only assist organizations who are migrating to open source but also to create international debate on these topics, especially after the recent approval of Microsoft’s Open XML as an ISO standard, a move that had been opposed by open source and free software advocates everywhere and fought within the standards organization by countries that suffer from proprietary software (including Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, India). North by South will be interviewing some of the participants and updating the site with news during the event.
North by South will be providing daily English-language updates during CONSEGI and posting pictures. Please check back here for continued updates!
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