At the recent German-speaking FSFE-teams meeting we held a session on how to extend our political work to the sub-national levels.
Although the FSFE is widely recognized as valuable partner to politicians at the european and national level, we still lack the time to have the same presence on the „lower“ political sphere in many regions. But since european politics aren’t structured top to bottom, many very important decisions that touch Free Software or Open Standards are made at those lower levels. In Germany for example, the state legislations are responsible for topics like education or state issues. Last but not least the municipals most likely exchange documents with citizens from time to time.
Yet FSFE gathers a significant number of activists all around Europe who eagerly want to fill this gap. So we talked about how to empower all those fine people, sometimes dubbed as „hobby lobby“, to get the desperately needed work done.
First we shared our experiences on the topic, which again showed how much FSFE is already doing in this area in German speaking countries, as well as the Netherlands. One suggestion was to pick the low hanging fruits first. Certainly every parliament contains politicians who are open-minded or even already connected to Free Software. It is our job to find and contact them and make sure they know that we can help them to understand Free Software issues, so they can make a good decision.
Finally we talked about what’s needed to get the work started. We agreed that we have to gather good practices (e.g. in a workshop), develop easy methodes which can used by unexperienced volunteers to help with the work (e.g. the Free Software pact). In a nutshell we think that FSFE has the potential to reach many more politicians on all political levels through its vital community, if the official body provides the needed support.