The paper describe analysis of potential use of free geomatic software in local government work, on the example of two popular programs. Presence of polish versions, implementation of standards and functions, simplicity of use and technical support were taken into consideration. Based on selected task, procedures of their completion were analysed and described. As free software is available free of charge, the only cost is related to implementation and training. As result of analysis it was stated, that QGIS is an interesting alternative for presently used in Poland tools, while gvSIG at the moment can be recommended mainly for data display, as gvSIG doesn’t support properly polish letters coding. Both programs are simple in operation and contain all basic functions, important from local government employee point of view.

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