Pretoria, 25 August 2006: NACI, the National Advisory Council for Innovation is part of a pilot Linux deployment within the Department of Science and Technology (DST).  It is rather appropriate that NACI lead the way as they are the group that advised Government to pursue a strategy of promoting Open Source and Open standards when they published the discussion document, Free/Libre and Open Source Software and Open Standards in South Africa: A Critical Issue for Addressing the Digital Divide .

 

What does this have to do with Translate.org.za?  We were invited to exibit OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird in 11 languages.  It also gave us the opportunity to present the South African keyboard and talk to a number of dignitaries about the need for the keyboard. 

 

During the formal speaches it was encouraging to hear key people from within Government institutions and within DST itself talk about the need for FOSS to grow local skills and of course the need for Open Standards so that our documents are accisble to all not just those who buy certain products. 

 

We would like to congratulate DST on their program of implementing various Open Source solutions an thank them for the opportunity to show more people our work.