At the 2008 edition, we invited Florian Schiessl and Frank Siebert to present the experience of the city of Munich on the migration of its fleet of PC (Limux project). During the fruitful discussions we had with them, we quickly shared the feeling that too few events gave an opportunity for members of European public administrations to meet and exchange experiences.

The Linux Days 2009 have wanted to meet this challenge and organize a special session "Public Administration" to provide not only quality presentations on selected topics, but also to allow sufficient time for participants to become better acquainted, to discuss, share and consider all the tracks that will move faster and more efficiently.

This willingness to exchange and gather leads in the three themes we have selected this year:

1. Change Management
2. Forges and communities
3. Legal aspects and public

The real challenges of implementing the software in the public sector we now seem to be much more related to these aspects as technical solutions themselves.

Change Management

How can an environment owner? How to 'sell' an open source to our users? By what path to climb a mountain that is often insurmountable? The reasons for success or failure of a migration project are very often related to how to manage change.

There are no answers to such questions. But the success factors are many and the solutions will certainly exchange of experiences of each other and the dynamics of sharing that we happen to run together during this session.

Forges and communities

For the public sector, sharing is at the heart of the potential of free software. The regional, national or European flower when it comes to develop, share and maintain the common heritage of open source software useful to the missions of the public sector. But much remains to be done, both in terms of promoting these initiatives, trails to follow to improve the federation of supply and demand, and especially the exchange of good practices related to life and the evolution forges or communities.

This session is expected to share experiences and gather the energy in this field.

Legal aspects and public

Whether you simply want to use free software, share solutions or properly prepare a tender, issues relating to legal aspects of free software (and open standards) are essential. Our ability to provide answers to these questions is an important factor of confidence to policymakers. Several organizations have already made good progress in the understanding of the topic and can provide advice and best practices.

This session will address various aspects related to legal aspects of free software, promoting discussion and exchange.