First of all the initiative - to use OSS - itself was a giant step the government took, since our country always had a huge influence of the major players, specially Microsoft.

Being a third world country this influence started to be seen as a bad thing, since the government costs with commercial software licensing were quite absurd.

I've gathered some news from our government's site that shows that things are looking very promising, but of course this should be taken with a grain of salt.

One of them specially - too bad I couldn't find a translated version - tells about how our government is using OSS to clean the "social previdence"⁽¹⁾ data bases, using a tool that includes phonetic comparison of names and, quoting the article, "Another difference between this tool and the programs that we use today is that it can analyze more elements than just the name of the beneficiary.", meaning that the OSS solution that is being adopted is more powerful than the commercial one.

Another nice part on the same article mentions that another good thing is that the government can alter the way the software works, which is clearly seen as a positive feature.

I know some people who work on government companies, so I'll try to bring some "inside view" for you.

(1) This is how we call here - "Previdência Social". I believe an analogy with the USA could be done by comparing this with your Social Security Service, but I'm not entirely sure.

Hope I've helped a little and please bare with me since my written english is a little rusty.

Regards,

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