Sourceforge exists. Why not just say all public sector apps will be open source and put into the public domain? Why limit your recycling to the public sector, and limit the creativity on which you draw to public sector only? Again, the whole document feels as if conceived inside a public sector ghetto, which can presenrve its unique qualities if it remains cut off from the rest of the world (but then has to buy everything from companies which in turn rip it off because of its unworldliness).

Open source has more powerful application eg for health, local gov and edu where same apps are needed over nd over than for Whitehall where the business is distinct and unique (tho basic office services of course remain generic)

Being able to click and download OpenOffice.org rather than blow the departmental budget and add to the licensing paperwork overhead will provide an excellent incentive to become cost efficient in software use.

Expect this idea might have fairly limited impact in economic terms.

“The scope for savings by 2020 runs here into many hundreds of millions of pounds given that it is not uncommon for large government organisations each to have between 300 and 1,000 applications in its portfolio”

It is absolutely shocking to find out that “large” government organisations have 1,000 applications in their portfolio.

Perhaps the person who did this research has included items such as Notepad, Character Map, Calculator, etc. Usually these are not included by organisations when doing an audit of their software, because understandably, they are bundled as part of most operating systems.

300 is a reasonable figure, assuming “large” means 3,000+ employees doing everything from marketing to poop-scooping.

But what concerns me is not the number of applications, rather the licensing of said applications. All too often, as a large organisation grows larger, Person X will want say, Adobe CS4 and will be given a license. Person X then leaves the organisation and that license goes unused for 5 years, resulting in a total waste of money.

Therefore, before looking at re-using the customer information database from poop-scooping for child care, why not rationalise all licenses and set up a system (oh I don’t know, say, a key server,) that ensures such expensive software does not go unused because of employees wandering astray.

Seriously though, if the US can get MilForge off the ground fast and start seeing the value of the app store concept in the military, why will it take until 2020 to see the savings in the UK? It’s hardly a new idea and there are plenty of folks in the communities that understand how to make it work.

1/10 Must try harder.

@Gooman but even with COTS there should be some savings:
a) by redeploying licences from leavers to joiners
b) by reducing the number of distinct apps which have to be integrated into the environment, monitored for upgrades etc.
c) reducing the range of apps but increasing the number of each one in the catalogue should enable purchasing efficiencies and better licensing deals

For bespoke software, it’s quite likely that the IPR will be held by the public body.

But for Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) software, the IPR will be held by the developer. The public body will have entered into a right-to-use licence which, in all likelihood, will have a per-user licence fee.

As such, for COTS the reuse savings are likely to be minimal.