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publishing source code is a way to give taxpayers’ money back to society.

Last but not least, it is an ethical and political decision. Barcelona has a specific data sovereignty guide and digital ethics standards – regulations, which state that the digital information and infrastructure we use should be a public good, owned by citizens.

Francesca Bria – Bria holds a PhD in Innovation Economics from Imperial College, London and an MSc on Digital Economy from Birbeck, University of London. She is a senior researcher and advisor for the European Commission on Future Internet and innovation policy.

In five years, how do you think the situation will look?

“Now we have 3,000 companies that work with us … citizen over 60% are small and medium-sized companies.”

Barcelona is constantly developing software applications and tools. When we start from scratch, we give preference to the use of Free and Open Source Software. Also, Barcelona’s Digital Transformation Plan has committed to investing 70% of its annual budget into Free and Open Source Software development.

We are gradually running a migration plan with a pilot project on migrating workstations to a completely free operating system, but this is not just about workstations, the whole informational infrastructure is moving towards open standards, open stack, and interoperability. Also, it is important for such decisions to not depend on one person or on the political orientation of one government. I think the right way to do such a major transition is to create empowerment for the workers, invest in training, and build knowledge-sharing processes inside the organisations.

Sentilo[1] is run by a consortium, and it has been reused in Dubai, in the US, in Italy, and in other parts of Europe. Decidim is used by many cities nowadays and we have ambitions to extend it. We also have other software projects like the digital ID, which we share locally with smaller town halls in Catalonia.

We are also doing interviews and research, to see which projects other cities have developed and published as Free Software. For instance, Helsinki has developed a very good app for transport sharing and they also have another app like ours. We are cooperating with Amsterdam and Torino, so there is a lot of collaboration going on. With out Free Software this would not be possible.

You mentioned you invest 70% of the new development budget into Free Software development. What effect does this have on the local economy?

It creates local Free Software and opens a tech ecosystem that can strengthen the collaborative innovation economy. Public procurement can create new markets and leverage local industry.

  1. Sentilo is a sensor and actuator platform aimed at municipalities or organisations that process large amounts of information received from the terrain. It processes information generated by various devices, like sensors for noise and air contamination or traffic congestion. It is used and supported by an active and diverse community of cities and companies.