UK Government announces Open Source trials

Posted on 10 Oct 2003 at 17:02

Open Source software received a boost, yesterday, wth the announcement that nine government departments are piloting Open Source platforms in a venture with IBM.

The trials should last from three to six months and include large departments such as the Department of Work and Pension, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Office of the eEnvoy, as well as smaller bodies such as Newham Borough Council and Orkney Council.

The scale of the pilots will also vary. Spokesperson Martin Day, of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) told us it would include 'a wide spectrum of trials - from a Government department sitting down with IBM to come up with solution for a specific issue from scratch, to controlled environment comparisons between applications running on Open Source and proprietary systems.'

An IBM spokesperson could not tell us precise details of the deployment, but said, 'I know Linux is being considered,' and that everything from servers to notebooks would be involved. The OGC has said that departments choosing Linux-based products will receive 'additional savings'.

Mr Day said that the trials will be used to establish 'efficiency gains': looking at savings in cost and time, but also factoring in retraining and maintenance. He pointed out that IBM was not necessarily the final choice for the Government's Open Source plans: 'This is only the first set of trials and we're open to other Open Source providers. So if Sun came to us, we'd be happy to talk to them.'

Currently, most offices are running Microsoft Windows systems, although with the majority of them being the 2000 version, at least they are still supported by Microsoft. Said Day: 'Microsoft is big in Government. And while this is not Microsoft bashing, do we really want our eggs in one basket? For example, if the Department of Health can make a five per cent gain through Open Source, that could mean a new hospital.'

At the heart of the Open Source swing, of course, is money: saving it and passing it on to front line services. 'Too much money has been wasted in the past [on IT procurement],' said Day. 'We've got to draw a line under IT failure.'

While he thought Windows may be the right choice in certain circumstances, he accused Government departments of 'rubber stamping' too many contracts to Microsoft without considering the alternatives, which came to a head with Microsoft's Licensing 6 program last year.

He said: 'Licensing is a big big issue. Just the increase alone on Microsoft licences last year would have cost us £60m. We said to Microsoft: sorry mate, we've got 250,000 licences to buy and we're not paying that. That sort of hard-nosed bargaining power saved us £100m on what we would have paid.'

The OGC was set up in April 2000 to advise and direct Government departments on getting value for money in their commercial activities.

Author: Matt Whipp