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UK Goverment IT Chief Backs Open Source Suppliers
Blacklaw writes "The UK government's deputy Chief Information Officer has outlined plans to hand public sector IT contracts over to small businesses and suppliers of open-source and cloud-based solutions in an attempt to balance the books. Speaking at the 360IT conference in London on Wednesday, Bill McCluggage also promised greater transparency over IT procurement, with tenders and contracts published online. Outlining a commitment to 'simplify, standardize and automate', McCluggage said the government would make it easier for open-source suppliers to compete for contracts, making the public sector less reliant on individual suppliers, or locked into proprietary systems."
Lets hope this brings an end to central government giving out contracts to HP/EDS which over run and never work.
hinting at a possible move towards cloud-based solutions to escape licensing restrictions
They should be careful not to let buzzwords govern their decision.
A lot of what passes as "the cloud" involves removing control from the user and moving that control to a centrally-managed proprietary virtual host.
If they happen to choose these sorts of "cloud" applications -- which are becoming increasingly common with the "SaaS" lock-em-in-and-rip-em-off crowd -- they're only going to multiply their licensing headaches.
Their advisors should make it a point to distinguish between open (commodity) computing platforms and centralized control platforms. Unfortunately, since this is a government body, their advisors are probably paid consultants from those same proprietary-platform companies.
And the date on that? February 25, 2009.
Well if I was a UK citizen I'd be concerned about "cloud based solutions" but applaud the use of open source. The use of both in this particular context leads me to believe this is an excercise in buzzword compliance to mask poor strategy and decision making. These qualities in a government official? Who'd a thunk it?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Usually courageous people like that get removed from office pretty quick. Also, his proprietary software opponents (vendors) will probably be very quick to pounce on any delays or missteps while systems transition to Open Source (while delays in proprietary software projects are quietly swept under the carpet due to 'commercial sensitivity'). I hope this guys pulls it off and levels the playing field - which should also save a lot of taxpayer pounds/dollars
the government does follow this route, the real bonus would be better transparency. Procurement in general in the public sector is poor - those of us working in defence often seriously question the choices that are made, not to mention the massive overspends and delays.
That said, the average person in the UK is more interested in what celebrities are doing than how their government spends their taxes.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
It's not about open source or "cloud-based solutions". The cost of closed source licenses to government IT costs is a drop in the ocean when you're paying £1000/day for consultants. The biggest problem (and I witnessed this 1st hand) is that the people running government IT seem to lack focus on what they want to have delivered, so projects run on and on.
The UK govt has never been known for its open policies. Typically, it will hire a firm to build a system, and any incomers will have to buy in to that companies system. Which is nice if you're the gatekeeper. If this ever takes off, then it will be a great step forward for UK software. If the govt publishes the specification, and products are measured against that, then competition is more likely to succeed. We might even get a real software industry.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Whether it's open source or closed source isn't the most important thing. Whether it's run locally or in the cloud doesn't make that much difference.
What really matters is whether the data is readily accessible in a known format. If you can get your data in some sane way that is independent of your current software, then you are in control. If you cannot, then you are not in control.
Of course, going OSS and going cloud-based each have their pros and cons as well, but IMHO they are secondary to controlling the data. For example, while OSS theoretically implies being able to access your data in a known format, I would still rather use a closed source solution with a cleaner known data format than an OSS solution where the code that manipulates the file format is difficult to understand and the format itself is more awkward.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
haven't you heard of latency ? It is what makes things real slow .
Deleted
This seems to come hot on the heels of the end of the Microsoft licensing deal with the NHS.
One of the side effects of the "Age of Austerity" is that the Government really doesn't have the money to throw around anymore. Real savings are having to be made in the Public Sector.
A simple choice is: Do we really get sufficient added value from having all the pretty functionality from the Microsoft Office suite, or do we really just need the basics (i.e. from Open Office, which is being used in Bristol City Council to a large extent) to create documents which can be stored. They may not look quite as slick, but they do the job nicely at a fraction of the cost (including support).
As Open alternatives start to be used, companies are increasingly finding that the myth of "there are no readily available skillsets in them, unlike Microsoft applications" really is a myth, and that there are a good many highly skilled people available at prices largely in line with the Microsoft setup, but often with a broader skillset behind that. It just seems to be that this is filtering into the view of Government now..
I'll be watching this one with interest; when used correctly, Open Source can be a huge cost saver. It's not the panacea for all ills, but when used as the right tool for the right job, everything works far better.
The primary focus is on awarding contracts to small businesses rather than a few behemoths. Whether they use open source or not does not really appear to be a consideration. And "open standards" will in practice just means "hide the actual data inside a pile of useless XML cruft and pass it around via SOAP".
By the way, most customers for this kind of software would rather eat their own heads than have to deal with multiple vendors for different parts of an integrated national system.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Presumably you mean the male of this species . Lucky you: they are quite rare in the UK these days. Maybe they keep failing to breed because the Government database of Lekking times and places has been contracted out to EDS and been buried in some evil proprietory format.
Ho hum. It seems like every three months or so we receive reports that the [insert name of favorite country, state, city, municipality, department or government agency here] pledges to 1) award more contracts to small business and 2) give preference to open source products. The end result is almost invariably the same: Large contracts go to large companies, allegedly because small companies can't prove they can "pull it off", and the usual closed source suspects get all the significant contracts based on some small or insignificant feature of their products that's missing in the competing FOSS product. (Sometimes it's something as blatant as "share point compatibility required", but mostly it's more subtle than that. In a few rare cases the purchaser openly admits that financial incentives beyond the reach of small / open source companies were part of the decision equation.)
Pledges won't change this state of affairs. The only way to break the pattern is to mandate reasonably-sized, neck to neck proof of concept implementations with focus on delivered functionality as part of the bid process. In the few cases I've actually seen that happen small and open comes out on top.
Never discount the UK mindset of stubborn resistance to change.
There is a school, not a half mile from where I sit right now, who have 1 Windows box for the school IMS and every other machine is either Mac or Linux. All the desktops for the pupils to use are Linux and most staff use Linux laptops.
They have had this system in place for at least the last 4 or 5 years.
Are they held up as an example? No.
Do other schools look to them? No.
Did the previous Government cite them as a brilliant example of cost saving and the freeing up of data from proprietary control? No, in fact they continued to sign the UK education sector up to illegal (by their own rules) "contracts" with MS and ignored the whole issue.
Our new Government has an even greater reputation for bending over for big business.
The headline sounds nice, but when it comes to actually carrying it out - I'm not holding my breath.
As long as they don't engage BT to deliver the g-Cloud. More than 40% of all of the funding for the NHS national program is sinking down that particular black hole, and wouldn't want to see any more KBEs being created on the back of providing overpriced services very slowly, and very, very poorly supported.
Several times I've heard "This PC came with Linux installed, format it and install Windows." I feel sad, but I really have a hard time making an argument for it. They want stuff that doesn't run on Linux, a familiar interface, the way they know how to do stuff, and that's it. Switching to another OS or application is hard, people only do it if there a strong reason. There have to be strong reasons to switch. Strong apps, that only run on the open source OS would attract people to it - but those get ported to all OS's.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
...but did anyone else initially read the guy's name as 'McLuggage'?
If he had a warped sense of humour, wonder if he'd consider naming his kids Valise and Satchel? ;o)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
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