The migration to the Open Source office applications started in January. OpenOffice has now been installed on a thousand PCs running either Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows 2000, says Laura Seidenari, a Modena city council IT worker responsible for the project.

"The city decided in 2004 to use Open Standards wherever possible", Seidenari explains. "We also want to reduce the amount we spend on software licences." She adds that moving to Open Source has allowed the city council to improve the quality of its desktop applications. "It has also given us access to a far greater group of software developers."

She says the city's IT workers have had to solve only a few minor issues, dealing with for example Microsoft Office macros. "We also use an application to keep track of construction sites. This and some other applications that link to Microsoft Excel are the only ones we could not immediately convert to OpenOffice."

Modena's move to OpenOffice is just the beginning. According to Seidenari, the city's civil administrators praise the Open Source alternatives. "They find the software user friendly and say it has increased their productivity. Because of this, OpenOffice is now being considered by other councils in the region."

OpenOffice is not the only Open Source application to be used in the Italian city. Modena is also busy replacing its proprietary web site content management system (CMS) with the Open Source alternative Plone, running on top of Zope, an Open Source application server.

Source: IDABC - "IT: City of Modena switches to OpenOffice“ July 8, 2008