The Open Projects Foundation will approach Prosecution about the public procurement for the construction of an information system for State Administration, announced by the State Administration Minister Nikolai Vasilev, regarding the selection of Microsoft in the framework agreement for the delivery of licensed software, BTA announced on November 18.
Open Projects Foundation announced it would demand the procedure to be halted, and it intended to file a complaint with the Commission for the Protection of Competition (CPC), mediapool.bg reported.
The foundation said it would inform European Commissioner for Consumer Protection Meglena Kouneva, and announced it would demand from the State Financial Inspection Agency to take a position on the procurement announcement.
According to the foundation, the name of the company should not have been included in the announcement of the procurement, which was said to be worth more than $18 million (12.3 million euro).
Atanas Markov from the foundation said that the State Administration Ministry would make it mandatory for all citizens to become Microsoft clients. The only way to fulfil legal requirements to electronically file a declaration or other information with the new system, would be if the person filing would also use the company's software, he said.
On November 19, State Administration Minister Nikolai Vasilev told bTV "I don't know if Prosecution will investigate the public procurement for the construction of an information system for state administration, but my job is to make sure the administration works."
Vassilev said that on November 29, a public debate would be held on the state administration software system and anyone who was interested was invited to take part, Focus news agency reported.
Vassilev said he would agree to change the software if there was better software than that of Microsoft.
In the new law, which was accepted in 2007, state administration was obliged to accept all kinds of documents, so the trend was for the administration to be more and more open, he said.
