4. We will set Open Standards and encourage Open Source Software
The Thompson report estimated annual savings of £600 million through greater adoption of Open Source solutions. This does not mean that government will not continue to use pre-written proprietary software when it is the best option. It does however, mean two important changes.
First, when a government department, agency or quango asks a vendor to write new code for a bespoke solution it will expect to require that this code is made available under an open source license. This is to decrease the cost of reusing this code across the public sector, to increase the public scrutiny of government ICT systems to prevent gold-plating, and to promote innovation in the wider economy.
Second, when a system is procured that involves supplying pre-existing software code, open source options will always be considered, where they exist. Where open source options are considered inferior to proprietary offerings, the government will assess whether paying a third party to upgrade an open source solution to suit its needs would be cheaper than purchasing a proprietary solution. Through this method it will sometimes be possible to both save taxpayers money, and create technology of use to the wider economy, whilst still being fair on vendors of proprietary software.
Open source is a close cousin of open standards – the creation of standard ways for computers to talk to each other.
Savings from an Open approach to government IT would not just come from reduced licensing costs – the majority of savings would result from using open standards that would free government bodies from long-term vendor lock-in.
We will establish a technical group in the next few weeks to identify the most important open standards for the government to set. These will both generate savings as more companies are able to offer to supply services, and promote innovation.
Open standards and the inter-operability that follows from their use will allow front-line service providers much greater flexibility to pursue their own solutions, subject only to conformity to these standards. Most of the benefits sought – unsuccessfully – from the massively expensive NHS IT programme could have been delivered at a fraction of the cost, in a quarter of the time, if front line providers had been free to make their own choice of supplier and system, so long as the systems could all connect with each other.
Excellent
I am a governor of a medium-sized state secondary school. The annual licence costs for a certain well-known operating system and its office applications is approx. £250,000.
If we switched to open source software (e.g. Linux and Open Office), in four years we could have saved enough to construct a much-needed new building.
If this was replicated across the country, the savings would be phenomenal.
However, there would be new costs in terms of re-training not only the support staff but the user community as well. Nevertheless, this would be transient and over one or two years the cost savings would start to be felt across the school and also by the parents who no longer would need expensive licences to support their children.
Computer crime would be down too as there is no need to hack or illegally copy free and open source software.
Unencumbered Open Standards not dominated by a single vendor or their ciphers.