%0 Conference Paper %B IADIS International Conference e-Society 2012, Berlin, Germany %D 2012 %T Selecting between open source and proprietary software: The public administrators' case %A Christos Bouras %A Vasileios Kokkinos %A Georgia Tseliou %X The necessity for the public sector to change over to communicating digitally is imminent. From the economic perspective, the changeover poses great challenges, as huge investments will have to be made in Information Technology (IT) in the public sector. It is therefore natural, in connection with these investments, for detailed assessment to be made of what forms of technology it is anticipated to be used, and who controls the development and ownership of this technology. This work constitutes a review of literature on pre-existing comparative studies regarding the technical, social, economic and organizational factors on Free Open Source Software (FOSS) usage. Furthermore, this work includes guidelines that Public Administrations (PAs) should follow for the selection between open source and proprietary software. Main goal of this paper is to add to knowledge resources that can help public stakeholders understand the technical / social / economic / organizational environment and reach informed decisions when selecting the appropriate software. The paper can also be useful for FOSS developers, users and communities who are either directly or indirectly involved in the software market. %B IADIS International Conference e-Society 2012, Berlin, Germany %P 185-192 %8 10-13 March %G eng