Viewpoint: Enable Public Sector Efficiency Through Open Source

 

With European countries experiencing unprecedented levels of social, political and economic change, reducing 'national overheads' is now a top priority. IT decision makers are constantly looking for faster, more efficient and innovative solutions to cut costs. The current climate, while undoubtedly challenging, provides a new opportunity for ICT leaders to consider new approaches and solutions for technology procurement of open source solutions, in an effort to deliver more with less for the hard-pressed taxpayer.

 

We´ve already seen the UK government embracing Open Source innovation; this can be seen by the launch of the new (November 2011) Open Source Procurement Toolkit out of the Cabinet Office, which enables decision-makers to judge the effectiveness of adopting this approach and the value it could bring to their department. This landmark launch firmly cements Open Source’s reputation as a reliable and more importantly cost efficient alternative to proprietary software.

 

The toolkit should also encourage IT leaders to work in collaboration with the Open community to provide innovative new solutions to reduce overheads and improve public services online. The first step to this process will be utilising the newly created Open Solutions online forum, a model enabling the discussion and debate of adopting open source software for UK public sector projects.

 

Let´s be clear, though. The UK is still well behind other EU countries and the US in terms of Open Source adoption. In the US, Open source communities such as Drupal run a large amount of Federal, State and Local Government sites, safely and securely as the approved and standardised platform. This isn’t simply a case of value for money; the extensive Drupal community has tens of thousands of people actively contributing to enhancing the software and developing and maintaining more than 10,000 modules.

 

But the blame for the UK´s slow start on open source adoption does not only rest with Whitehall; some responsibility lies with Open Source providers to help educate procurement teams about what commercial service and support offerings are available. A common barrier to entry in UK government seems to be a persistent lack of understanding that leading OS vendors have provided commercial service level agreements (SLAs) and enterprise support for many years, for example.

 

The Coalition's 'Big Society' agenda promotes a collaborative approach to problem solving - so there has never been a better time for Open to now make its case. Our developer communities strive for excellence through collaborative working and long-term partnerships. The added value, of course, is that Open Source software provides a licence-free opportunity for unprecedented cost savings to the bottom line.

 

I’m a firm believer that Open Source projects should win on merit; the new Toolkit will provide a level playing field which the community must take advantage of to prove those merits. The verdict's clear: as the UK government is clearly willing to look closer at embracing open source, there has never been a better time for Open Source communities and vendors to prove they can add value to government IT.