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By Andy McCue, 9 October 2003 14:11

NEWS Linux is being trialled in nine projects across the UK public sector as part of government-wide plans to promote cheap and efficient alternatives to proprietary software products. The trials are backed by Whitehall spending watchdog the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and the Office of the e-Envoy, and follow the publication of an open source strategy document last August recommending government departments to consider Linux during any IT procurement process. The OGC hopes the trials, which will last from three to six months, will produce research that can be then shown to departments to verify that not only can significant savings can be made using open source but that the products are at least as reliable and efficient as proprietary ones. Martin Day, spokesman for the OGC, told silicon.com the trials will demonstrate exactly what the benefits of transferring to Linux are and ensure the taxpayer is getting value for money from government IT systems. "It is part of our ongoing remit to look at open source. If government departments are worried about interoperability this technology is taking that problem away," he said. Day also cited AMD's Opteron chip as an example of the way often less sophisticated hardware used to run open source software is "catching up", while still offering significant cost savings. The OGC has developed its strategy after looking closely at the German federal government's model introduced over a year ago. It culminated in the high-profile case of the Mayor of Munich snubbing a desperate last-minute personal plea from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer not to switch to Linux. Day revealed that OGC officials were recently over in Germany looking at the IBM-backed open source model the German Federal government has put in place. "The German ideas have been an influence on the way we do this. We looked at the German model and were impressed," he said. Jeremy Wray, public sector business development executive at IBM, told silicon.com that the German government now has around 500 open source projects up and running. The first UK trials are being run in conjunction with IBM but the OGC said it is actively looking for other interested suppliers to take part in future projects to ensure the government does not move from one main proprietary vendor like Microsoft to a single Linux supplier. The Office of the e-Envoy was contacted but did not return requests for comment.