UKGovOSS - Open Source Government CommunityPublic Sector Forums

A warm welcome if you’ve just joined us!

One of the features of UKGovOSS is that members can create and manage their own special interest groups, with their own dedicated forum and group wire. 

And we’re really pleased to see our first three groups have been founded.  Say hi to Ubuntu UK (founder: Alan Pope), Open Source Security and Governance (founder: Richard Morrell) and new in today, the Open Data group, run by Joss Winn.  Please check out the groups.

Seeking Moderators!

We’re also inviting members to become moderators for the other UKGovOSS groups. We’re looking to have at least one moderator for each of the following:

• Open Source CMS for Government
• Open Standards
• OSS Supplier Forum

We’d like moderators to take an active part in their group and encourage positive interaction and discussion between members.  So if this interests you, please ping me a private message or an email (ian.cuddy@publicsectorforums.co.uk) Many thanks.

To mark the launch of UKGovOSS, today we’re publishing our new report looking at the state of open source software activity in local government.

Open or Closed? is based on research we carried out late last year to examine the adoption, perceptions and experiences of open source in councils across the UK.  Our thanks to the 168 local authority managers and staff who took part.

Some headlines from the survey:

• 64% believe their council needs to increase its use of open source software (27% agreeing strongly)
• Around half say their council will increase its open source use by 2011
• 370 local government open source deployments identified
• Software licensing costs represent 30-40% of some councils IT budgets
• Why do councils go open source? 75% put lower cost as #1 factor
• Office software is where open source will impact most in local government over the next three years
• 65% believe perceptions of open source being ‘too risky’ stops councils from using open source more widely.

That’s just a taster of the report, which has been kindly sponsored by Bull Information Systems and One Point Consulting.  We hope this report is useful and welcome your comments on our findings.

Download a PDF copy of Open or Closed? here (5.5MB) or learn more about the report.

If the download is slow, try one of the links below:

• Download point 2
• Download point 3

The Government has published today a ‘revised’ version of its Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use Strategy, coinciding with the launch of its new ICT Strategy, ‘Smarter, Greener, Cheaper’.

Outlined in the latest plans - the first update in almost a year - are new measures designed to promote open source adoption in the UK public sector.   According to the Government, these  will provide ‘more clarity on the actions expected of suppliers and procurers of Government ICT.’   While not amounting to a ‘wholesale’ shift in policy, the key changes include:

• Government IT procurements to include an open source test: Suppliers will need to ‘provide evidence of consideration of open source solutions’ or be disqualified from bidding (as previously blogged here)
• Where proprietary suppliers provide a ‘perpetual licence’ which gives the appearance of zero cost, procurement teams will need to apply a ’shadow’ licence price in calculating total cost of ownership. This will be defined as either the supplier’s un-discounted list price or the public sector price on a ‘Crown’ deal.
• The Government has also underlined to vendors it expects software licenses to be transferrable across the public sector.

In another very positive development, we can confirm Mark O’Neill, Chief Information Officer at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, will be the Government’s CIO lead for open source.

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.

Public Sector Forums reports that IT suppliers could be blocked from bidding for government contracts unless they can show they have seriously considered using open source software.

The decision was made at a recent summit meeting of the Government’s Chief Information Officer Council, its local government counterpart and sister body the Chief Technology Officer Council.

Minutes from the meeting, which are now available here, suggest cross-government agreement on what appear to be radical changes in the Government’s approach towards IT procurement, including updating the tender process ‘to ensure bids will be conformant to agreed strategies’.

This meeting report goes on to say a requirement will be included that ’suppliers must demonstrate actual review of open source products else bid will be rejected as non compliant’.  Specifically, suppliers who fail to meet the Government’s new requirements would be ‘down selected’ at the pre-qualification stage in any procurement.

As some will be aware, this development coincides with recent criticism by open source vendors that since the publication of the Government’s Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use strategy in February this year, there has been little evidence of change in public sector procurement practices.

Further details about the policy are expected to be given in the Government’s new IT strategy, due out in December.

Well, in case you weren’t already aware, the event scheduled for 25 November has had to be postponed for a few months.

While we had really excellent support from sponsors and speakers, we felt there just wasn’t enough participants to make it worthwhile for those attending.  As we’ve seen at our first event in Manchester earlier this year, a lot of the value in gatherings like this comes from the opportunities for networking, discussion and interaction among those taking part.

So while this is really disappointing for us, particularly after the success of the Manchester conference and the hard work put into the London event, the good thing is what we’ve learned from this will allow us to build a better and more valuable event in the future.  Our thanks again to all those who offered their support, and also our apologies to all those looking forward to the event.

But onwards and upwards. All being well, we’re hoping to schedule the event early on in 2010, so stay tuned for news as and when.

UKGovOSS.org last week welcomed our 100th member.  See our full list of members here.

For us this is a real milestone in the growth in the community - and pretty remarkable given the network launched less than a month ago.  Thanks to everyone for their support so far.

That said, we know we have a great, great deal more work to do to reach out across the public sector and further afield. 

One of our current priorities is building links with (and between) open source communities of interest, organisations and individual pockets of activity.  We’ve had several encouraging developments here which we’ll give you a full update on shortly.  Advice and suggestions on building the community are always welcome.

PS: If you’re already a member of UKGovOSS.org, why not invite a friend?

As a friend said recently:  ‘There’s nothing like a live beta to keep you on your toes!’

Truer words were never spoken. Setting up the site has been something of a learning process - with one issue we’ve learned much about being social networking spam.

We’ve had two reports this week of spambots entering the site. This is annoying to us all, so to counter this we’ve put in place a CAPTCHA to prevent spambots registering, a real-time IP address block to prevent known spammers accessing the site, spam protection on comments, an email registration blacklist and are looking at what else we can do on top of what we’ve got.

The ‘Send message’ link is now only visible to contacts on your Friends List, which should also help to prevent unwanted messages to some extent.

My apologies if you’ve been affected and many thanks for your understanding.

UKGovOSS.org wouldn’t be here without the support of Jack Pickard of The Pickards Information Services, who helped to build, develop and customise the site.

Well-known to those in the local government web arena, Jack is an experienced and accomplished web developer with a real passion for social media, accessibility and standards compliance.

And having worked closely with Jack on this and several other projects, we can attest to his skills and recommend him to others.  In fact just before UKGovOSS went live , he rectified - with lightning speed - an issue caused by an browser update which would have prevented us from launching the site.

Thanks again Jack for all your help!

Visit his website (his blog is also a great read) and follow him on Twitter at @thepickards.

Jack’s profile on UKGovOSS.org