Possibility of savings:
Open-source software is not necessarily free, but in most cases is considerably cheaper than proprietary software. There may therefore be economic advantages for the public sector in using open-source software.

Security and quality:

Open source code enables the user and other interested parties to check whether the program is written in a justifiable way and where appropriate to identify elements of danger for
the stability and security of the code. This makes it possible for open-source software to be secure and of high quality.

As the source code is open and it is permissible to modify this, public authorities can adapt open-source software to particular needs. It will be possible for a customization to be re-used in other parts of the public sector, resulting in lower software customization costs.

The public sector is to be changed over to communicating electronically and, by using the Internet in particular, is to provide public services with the citizen at the centre.

Sharing of software and knowledge:-

A common attitude in the open source community is that the restrictions on the rights of users of proprietary software prevent the sharing of software and knowledge, and that this conflicts with the user’s interest but also in a broader sense with the objective of promoting the development of software technology.

Another important element in attitudes in the open source world is support for open standards. The HTML standard is an example of an open standard. A particular characteristic of open standards is that their definitions are publicly available in contrast, for example, to Microsoft’s doc file format, which is secret. Open standards promote user independence. For example, anyone can attempt, on the basis of the definition of the HTML standard, to develop programs that write or read HTML documents (e.g. web browsers).