You are here: silicon.com > Public Sector

Leader: Linux in government - better late than never

Will the OSA loosen Microsoft's grip?

Tags: desktop linux

By silicon.com

Published: 2 March 2006 11:20 GMT

Some people might be surprised that the government is only just waking up to the idea that open source is secure, stable and attractive to end users.

Better late than never, though.

And to be honest, Whitehall has been getting cannier about its software spending. Increasingly it has been aggregating demand across the public sector into mega-deals that get government agencies better value than their own bargaining power could have achieved.

Why force every part of government to reinvent the wheel - or in this case rediscover the penguin?

But the public sector, in all its various forms, still spends tens of millions each year on proprietary software - including that from Microsoft.

And so the government should get a good return on the small amount of money it has spent on the Open Source Academy - especially if the OSA successfully builds a business case that shows local authorities how they can save money by moving off of their proprietary software packages.

Many authorities might see the attraction of leaving proprietary offerings behind yet don't have the luxury of testing out these ideas on anything other than a very small scale.

But with something as repeatable as migrating desktops to open source, many organisations can learn from the OSA's projects.

IT departments in the private sector are also rarely big enough to take on this kind of research, although many are facing exactly the same dilemmas about what to do with open source. They too can learn from these projects.

The concept of the OSA makes a lot of sense, as a single testing bed for potentially disruptive technologies. Perhaps there are other technologies that could benefit from the same treatment, for example in the mobile space.

After all, why force every part of government to to reinvent the wheel - or in this case rediscover the penguin?

  1. Zones
  2. Management
  3. Networks
  4. Software
  5. IT Services
  6. Hardware
  1. Verticals
  2. Public Sector
  3. Financial Services
  4. Retail & Leisure

silicon.com Public Sector
Get the latest public sector news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the PS newsletter today!


  • Jobs
UK Sales Manager

Experience in selling complex IT and hardware solutions to both private sector and local authorities. UK Sales Manager AMCS UK is a developer and ...

Commercial Director/Financial Controller

Commercial Director/Financial ControllerThe CompanyThis organisation (t/o c.6m) is a leading manufacturer serving Local Authorities, Local ...

Sharepoint Designer/Developer

They are in the process of migrating existing intranet and internet sites built on various legacy Microsoft technologies to the MOSS 2007 platform. ...

Nick Heath
Next stop HMRC: How TfL CIO will shake up the taxman
Interview: Phil Pavitt, CIO Transport for London, on making IT boring

Gary Bettis
Public sector CIOs: It's your time to shine
Comment: Efficiency programme offers big challenges and opportunities

Gary Lynch
How e-coding can prevent NHS slip-ups
Barcodes to run in their blood

silicon.com
Inbox: Chip and PIN latest big IDea - and still no readers
"PIN numbers do not present much of a challenge to a determined crook"

Jo Best
From army officer to IT chief - CPS CIO David Jones
Profile: What IT and the military have in common

silicon.com
Inbox: Government IT ignoring red lights?
"The civil servants who specify these projects are not competent technically"

Agenda Setters 2008
Welcome to the ninth annual Agenda Setters poll – silicon.com's list of the top 50 most influential individuals in the technology and IT industries, from techies and CIOs to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Find out more in our latest special report.




Quick Sitemap Links: