http://www.osor.eu/news/gr-municipalities-to-get-open-source-platform-for-electronic-services GR: Municipalities to get open source platform for electronic services by Gijs Hillenius — last modified Dec 17, 2008 04:40 PM — filed under: [T] Deployments and Migrations, [GL] Greece Greek municipalities are building an open source platform to offer citizens and small and medium sized business access to their services. This Local Government Application Framework (LGAF) will be developed by the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece (Kedke). Sixteen cities and municipalites will begin the development project, including Imathia, Ithaca, Konitsa and Chios. LGAF will allow citizens and SMBs to pay taxes and fines, add and modify their public administration records, purchase permits and licences. The system will also offer information on public health, social care, the environment and sport and cultural activities. The municipal services can be accessed using the Internet or by a voice response system. Kedke is also planning to build-in an SMS gateway that can inform users via text messages. LGAF will be made available to all Greek municipalities at no cost, according to a statement published by Kedke. "All municipalities will be able to build on the experience of the sixteen communities." Kedke will however charge for technical support." The organisation hopes the platform will become a reference for other interoperability projects. Kedke will use open source software such as the content management system BetaCMS to offer access to legacy IT systems. The system will also be based on the Greek government Internet backbone, Syzefxis that links all municipalities. The LGAF project website was launched in June. More information: Local Government Application Framework