22 Mar 2011
In more than 30 years of working in public sector ICT I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met who actually think what these people say we think.
There is usually an implicit assumption that the main target for cost savings should be generic desktop and server software, for which there may be acceptable open source alternatives that we are perversely rejecting.
Actually, this is not the bulk of public sector ICT spend. The real costs are in line-of-business applications. When the open source movement produces credible solutions for paying benefits, administering social care, managing road maintenance and collecting taxes, I will welcome them with open arms. Until then I am forced to buy commercial software and run it on the platforms the vendors support.
I have no bargaining power because the vendors know we have to have these niche solutions whether they are open source or standards-compliant or not. We have a legal obligation to deliver the services. When the the UK eGovernment Interoperability Framework was introduced, did vendors adopt open interoperability standards, just because we issued specifications saying they should? Of course not. As one vendor said to me: “Sure, we’ll re-engineer our solution to be compliant – if you pay us to do it.”
The public sector is no worse than any other sector when it comes to using open source. If it’s so much cheaper, why isn’t the private sector falling over itself to adopt it? Surely the bottom line is their driving incentive?
Public and private sectors do use open source, but in the same way they use other technologies: tactically, with one eye on business need and the other on total cost of ownership. And sitting somewhere between them is value for money.
Derek B
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