UKGovOSS - Open Source Government CommunityPublic Sector Forums

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Responding to a Parliamentary Question this week, Cabinet Office Minister Angela Smith quoted examples from ‘recent’ unpublished central government research which suggests that open source adoption is improving.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.

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.

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?

The UKGovOSS network is here to bring together all those involved in open source and open standards in the public sector.

Firstly, apologies to all that I’ve not been particularly active lately on the UKGovOSS website - it’s been a busy few months and my attentions have had to be elsewhere, but I’m now back in the saddle.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been pretty busy behind the scenes, working on the UKGovOSS platform, bug-testing and preparing new content.

 The community will be officially launched to the world later this week (Thursday 6 August), along with (finally!) the results of our survey on Open Source use in Local Government, which were previewed at our conference back in April.

So sorry again for the wait, we’re getting there.  Any feedback, comments, or suggestions you have are greatly appreciated. Many thanks.