Making Government Policies for Education Possible by Means of Open Source Technology: A Successful Case

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe the products and services offered by the Department of Computer Science of the Federal University of Paraná within the scope of the Paraná Digital project. The department has designed laboratories with Internet access for 2,100 public schools of the state, with innovative technology through an environment entirely based upon free software tools, centralized management as well as continuous maintenance, and betterment of the services offered. We place special emphasis on our strategies, aiming at contributing to the adoption of such strategies in contexts relatively similar to ours, with which a parallel may be drawn concerning the hypothesis situation of the present project.