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Government Action Plan on Open Source Awry

A colleague recently invited me to comment on a proposal they have been reviewing before a major government department undertakes a technology update in the near future. I was reminded of our post back in April last year optimistically titled UK Government Encompasses Open Source. I wonder if I might have been breaking out the champagne bottles a little early, as it seems that little has changed in the glacial world of government IT thinking. Obviously my colleague, the government department involved and the suppliers involved will not be named for legal reasons.

It appears that it might take the closed world of government procurement and suppliers a few more decades before the radical concepts of open standards and best value impinge on the practices and closed thinking. After all, Open Source would mean we could use WordPress, PHP and MySQL on Apache for non critical applications such as Intranet sites, for example, or the Joomla portal engine and content management system.

However, the proposed technical solution in the, soon to be rolled out, upgrade is likely to exclude Open Source (presumably on grounds of security!) and any operating system except Microsoft Windows. I will not stoop to comment again on the browser version, as you can read previous musings in A Few More Nails in the Coffin of IE6

In a touch of spookiness reminiscent of the best spy movies, since starting this post, the source material has disappeared from the Cabinet Office web site! At the start of writing it was at www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/transformational_government/open_source.aspx, but the link now returns a Page/Document not found! It is not just us who are pointing to the missing link, as writetoreply.org also carry the broken link at writetoreply.org/ukgovoss/, along with some of the details.

For those who did not dig into the content of the paper before it disappeared, the document outlined the expected expansion in the use of Open Source and Open Standards, with the main action points as follows:

  1. Clarity in procurement
  2. Increasing capability within Government
  3. Reuse as a practical principle
  4. Maturity and sustainability
  5. Supplier Challenge
  6. International examples and policies, and keeping up to date with developments
  7. Industry/Government joint working
  8. Open Standards
  9. Open Source techniques and reuse within Government, and appropriate release of code
  10. Communication, Consultation and Review

Government Action Plan on Open Source Awry
If only someone had a copy in their cache, we could read the whole thing. If you are linking to this post or referring to it or it’s source, please use the tag #ukgovOSS to enable interest in the subject to be tracked.

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UK Government Encompasses Open Source

One of my contacts in the open source community pointed out to me an important announcement that the Government has made, which shows some crucial steps on the way to legitimizing the concept of open source software in government. For this commentator, this is not a moment to soon.

Although they last reviewed the Open Source policy back in 2004, and the background blurb makes some interesting claims about penetration of OS in IT Procurements and contracts, IMHO there is still a long way to go. This is particularly true as the suppliers (who can not be named for legal reasons) often make a substantial part of their revenue from percentage markup on products supplied. There is not much of a markup on Linux or Apache distros!

I understand that the influential Power of Information task force, the group working within the Cabinet Office to suggest better ways of using Government Information has actually published their interim report back to government in a ‘wiki-like’ form to allow comments from the community before final publication. I remember the last time I suggested a Wiki as a way to collaborate in a criminal justice forum, my ears popped from the collective sharp intake of breath. Way to go Power of Information task force! Was it an open source Wiki? Well maybe next time!

Fortunately the wider world has seen fit to encompass the Open Source ideal, which has led to some robust and sustainable enterprise–class business models developing for the support of the software. The cry of the suppliers about the lack of security and support now sounds a little hollow. The announced ‘programme of positive action’ and the requirement for a ‘level playing field’ between open source and proprietary software may be the beginning of the end for massively overpriced Government contracts with proprietary lock in. The Government has anounced that it will use open standards in its procurement specifications and require solutions to comply with open standards. About time too!

My thanks go to Tony Dixon over at Red Hat for the pointer.

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