

UK executive knocks back Govt projects that don't consider FOSS - tankenmate
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/31/government_closed_source_kicked_back/

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arethuza
I wonder what proportion of the government IT spend went on licenses - I
suspect the real crimes were the billions paid to consulting companies during
the Labour years.

In fact, if I was _really_ cynical (which I am when it comes to how HMG spends
our money) I might wonder if the use of open-source software might be pushed
by consulting companies as an opportunity to increase their share of spend,
rather than decreasing actual project costs.

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vetler
Yeah, that is cynical. As a consultant, I push open-source software because I
like working with it.

This is the first time I've heard someone suggesting that it might be an
opportunity to increase their share of spend, but ... you have a good point.
However, it's not automatic that reduced software costs result in higher
consulting fees. The government might have more money in general to spend on
projects, but that's a good thing for everyone.

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iuguy
To put this into context, open source was previously deigned not acceptable in
large swathes of government due to procurement and liability problems. HMG
civil servants have mostly developed an inate and enviable skill in blame
deflection, non-answering and political maneuvering mostly due to the
politicisation of their day jobs. It's an odd world out there.

So by forcing them to consider FOSS this is the government's attempt to put it
right. If they just told people that FOSS was now acceptable, people in some
parts of HMG would still use closed source software in case the wind changes
again.

What's bad is that departments appear to be excessively pressured into open
source, which is not a good idea. It's important to go for the best tool for
the job and the things you can manage the most effectively, which might not
always be open source.

~~~
DanI-S
> What's bad is that departments appear to be excessively pressured into open
> source, which is not a good idea. It's important to go for the best tool for
> the job and the things you can manage the most effectively, which might not
> always be open source.

That wasn't the impression I got from the article:

 _“We believe open source isn't properly considered when we are doing IT. Our
objective is not to have a target for open source in government – a year on
year increase. Our objective is to best explore the opportunities out there.
Sometimes that might be open source. At the moment, we believe we are missing
out on the opportunities.”_

Based on that quote, it sounds like they are taking a surprisingly well
considered approach. Is this not the case in some departments?

~~~
iuguy
I can only talk about my own experiences, but given the pushes for cuts in
costs open source is now being touted around some places as being the way to
go, regardless of best tool for the job. As I said, HMG is a very strange
place and it's big too, so not everything will be the same, but I've seen a
couple of projects in the past 12 months where people have come back and
challenged the decision to go with things like Oracle DB versus MySQL and so
on. Once you're getting accused of flagrant spending (worse than death in some
bits of HMG) on licences, you tend to over-cut.

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celticninja
I work for the civil service in the UK and previosuly the oppositte was true.
When looking for new software solutions FOSS was not appropriate because "the
tender process could not assess free software".

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Maxious
In Australia, all IT tender responses must include a FOSS option to be
considered valid [http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/strategy-and-
governan...](http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/strategy-and-
governance/docs/2010-004_AGIMO_Circular_Open_Source_Software_Policy.pdf)

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waqf
The word "executive" is confusing at best in the submission title, because we
don't have the "three branches" mythology in the UK. Maybe just simplify it to
"UK govt knocks back projects ...", if you don't want to get into the details
of the Cabinet Office's rôle?

