Open Source Strategy Gaining Traction, Claims Minister
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Responding to a Parliamentary Question this week, Cabinet Office Minister Angela Smith quoted examples from ‘recent’ unpublished central government research which suggests that open source adoption is improving.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:
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- 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.
Open Source Strategy Gaining Traction, Claims Minister | UKGovOSS … | Open Hacking said:
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December 17th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
putt1ck said:
Not to be picky or anything, but….
From the bottom: Birmingham made that move a long time ago under the ODPM efforts; the NHS spine using an open source operating system was a decision made years ago; and whether or not a school has a Linux box is probably an accident or misleading (Moodle server, filtering box, the IT support staff personal preference). None of them is actual evidence of progression; we’ve even had the recent claim that continued use of IE was a good idea despite the zero day flaw, despite other governments advising otherwise. How many government departments use Firefox?
January 26th, 2010 at 3:43 am