By Ingrid Marson, 21 January 2005 10:35
NEWS There are more than twice as many French and German local authorities using open source software compared with UK authorities, according to a survey.
According to the preliminary results of a survey carried out by a Dutch University, only 32 per cent of UK local authorities are using open source software, compared to 71 per cent of French, 68 per cent of German and 55 per cent of Dutch authorities. The results, which include data from 371 local authorities across 13 European countries, were announced by Rishab Ghosh, the programme leader of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) survey, at an open source software conference in London on Thursday. The full results of the survey, which will include data from 750 respondents, are due to be announced in February.
Ghosh said that one possible reason why the UK lags behind other European countries is the lack of clarity in UK government policy.
"In the UK, the government policy seems to be confused and is implemented differently between departments," said Ghosh.
The government's procurement watchdog, the Office of Government Commerce, published a report that said open source is "a viable desktop alternative for the majority of government users" in October last year. But, shortly after the publication of this report, the NHS awarded Microsoft a nine-year contract to put its software on 900,000 computers.
A conference attendee raised concerns about the value of the government's policy if it is not enforced.
"There doesn't seem to be a lot of joined up thinking between departments in government policy," said one attendee. "One department in particular, the NHS, seems to be breaking all the rules in the policy. Do you have any thoughts on the usefulness or otherwise of the policy, and how it might be monitored?"
Other European countries have shown what appears to be a more proactive approach to encouraging the use of open source software in public institutions. The French and German government have published extensive guidelines on the use of free software in government, said Ghosh.
The Dutch government has supported its open source policy by setting up OSOSS, a government funded agency to give public agencies legal, technical and organisational advice on open source software. Mark Bressers, a programme manager at OSOSS, speaking at the conference, said it has tackled many misconceptions about open source software, such as the view that it is free of charge and therefore not compatible with a capitalist society.
"There are a lot of prejudices against open source software -- people think it's free software and wonder why people would want to do that for free," said Bresser. "They think those kind of people must be people with beards and long hair. It's important to build confidence in open source software. We tell them that people in suits and ties are investing in open source software, and that it is not anti-capitalist -- for a lot of agencies it's important to know that."
Ingrid Marson writes for ZDNet UK.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. peter scargill
Could another reason why the UK government lacks behind Europe in the use of Open Source be because they are not quite so blatantly obviously anti-American and pathetically anti-Microsoft as some of our European "cousins" are?
2. Nick Cassidy
UK way behind? Rubbish. Commercial software provides higher ROI, lower TCO, way better functionality, has bigger ongoing R&D budgets and even scores more highly in the interoperability stakes because of the universal adoption of Web Services interfaces. I'd say that because UK organisations evaluate responses to ITTs using more sophisticated value based models that they are less likely to be seduced by a cheap open source system that ultimately costs them more and does less. Stick that in your Red Hat.
3. anonymous
Great article - shame about the headline.
I was at the conference, and the UK government DOES have a clear policy on OSS. It was handed out at the conference, so I guess your reporter might not have been there, and is writing from a press release? You can also find a (less up-to-date) copy of the policy at http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?docid=2190
It is a quite clear (and refreshingly concise) document that states that OSS is to be considered alongside proprietary software and that the taxpayers (i.e. yours and mine) money should be spent with regard to value for money.
So, a victory for common sense from the government (how unusual).
The Dutch survey did indeed highlight a lack of uptake of OSS in UK government, but most at the conference felt this may be a reflection of poor uptake in UK IT in general.
4. anonymous
I fear Messrs scargill and Cassidy are wide of the mark. Many government computer programmes have used commercial software and been collosal failures. Whether they would have been any better with open source we will never know but my experience makes me doubt it. As a professional engineer in the Civil Service I had some involvement in computer intitiatives. Some did not get off the drawing board and some were started and failed. The common feature was that the purse strings were held by administrators with no technical knowledge who had two techniques. Firstly they would reject a scheme because they did not understand the benefits and so believed the money would be wasted. If that failed a committee was appointed to decide on the specification with the competent members relegated to advice only. The result was an inadequate brief passed to the wrong organisation to produce a system the users could not use. I am sorry to say this trend seems to be continuing.
5. Linus T. Gates
Waaah...business consultants from Nottingham -
I can say as much from reading the Microsoft ad that appears right above the article - oh look, ...the TCO for Windows Server System approach was about 20% less expensive than linux...anyone with half a brain wouldn't just take this nonsense for granted.
6. TS
If savings can be made it is the duty of the government to make those savings for the taxpayer. I run a small business and use Abiword, Open Office etc and save thousounds.
The TCO of Microsoft Office refers to having to re-buy it every two years when you find Microsoft has kindly updated the document format for everybody.
7. Anon
I have tried using linux on my pc desktop an immediatelly ran into incompatibility problems. E.g.
• drivers not available for my network card
• I use Excel pivot tables connecting to an ODBC driver using MS Query
• I use a PDA that does not talk to linux
• my digital camera (may) have trouble talking to linux via ODBC
• I use Macromedia Dreamweaver for my job which does not run on linux
Whilst the idea of using linux is attractive, the reality is that most people are bound to MS Windows by a lack of software for Linux.