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Simon Phipps - Sun’s Chief Open Source Officer - flags up an interesting ministerial disclosure on how the Government is measuring progress on implementing its Open Source Strategy.

Responding to a Parliamentary Question this week, Cabinet Office Minister Angela Smith quoted examples from ‘recent’ unpublished central government research which suggests that open source adoption is improving.  However the minister also indicated there was no central monitoring of whether the strategy is filtering through to public sector software procurements.

The response in full:

“The Open Source, Open Standards and Re-use Action Plan was published in February 2009 as Government policy-focussing on ensuring value for money for taxpayers. Cabinet Office does not gather centralised data regarding software procurement, as this is the responsibility of individual Accounting Officers.

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is currently developing guidance for the procurement of open source and is working with departments and local authorities that have successfully implemented open source applications, to share best practice and effective methods for procurement.

A recent survey undertaken by OGC and Buying Solutions (the national Public Buying Organisation) highlighted that progress on implementation is already being made. For example:

• • Over 25 per cent. of secondary schools use the Linux operating system on at least one computer.
  • 35 per cent. of NHS organisations (over 300,000 users) are supported on a Linux infrastructure as the NHS ‘Spine’ uses an open source operating system, and
  • All staff and public PCs in Birmingham City Council’s library services now have a mixture of open source and proprietary software.”

Our own research report, released in August 2009 and available here, identified 370 separate deployments of open source software in UK local government alone.

As widely reported, a draft ‘unclassified’ copy of the Government’s new public sector IT strategy has been made public, ahead of the final report’s scheduled release later this month.  The original PDF version can be downloaded here from PSF while the Conservative Party has also made a copy open to comments online (powered by WordPress).  Bear in mind this is said to be an ‘early’ draft of the strategy and not the finished work.

Notably, in terms of concrete action to take forward the Government’s strategy on Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use, the draft report says:

“the Open Source, Open Standards, and Reuse working group will deliver clear and open guidance for ensuring that open source and proprietary products are considered equally and systematically for value for money. By 2011, public bodies will store and share records of their approval and use of Open Source software on the G-Cloud. The Government Applications Stores will hold Open Source solutions that are available for reuse in the public sector and by 2015 public bodies  will review existing solutions available before going to market for new solutions.”

Judging from discussions I’ve had with the Cabinet Office, this isn’t the sum total of the Government’s plans to promote open source. However if you’re looking for a great analysis of the draft strategy, see this commentary from Computer Weekly’s Glyn Moody: Making Government IT Better and Open.

And talking of guidance on using open source solutions, NCC has a new white paper out, produced by the Open Learning Centre and OpenForum Europe.