Government deputy CIO sees bigger role for open source

Bill McCluggage outlined his ICT strategy in his keynote address

In his keynote address on the first day of the 360 degree IT event at Earls Court, London, deputy government CIO Bill McCluggage outlined his plans for the government to make greater use of open source tools.

Although McCluggage believes the technology should be able to deliver cost savings compared with proprietary technology, he invited the industry to prove this to him. He said: "I have not [yet] seen a business case that has articulated open source as cheaper than proprietary."

He added: "I have asked organisations to provide case studies proving that open source works and is better."

McCluggage stated his desire to create a level playing field for open source software, and enable large ICT contracts to be split into smaller components with a maximum value of £100m, which would allow smaller open source companies access to government contracts.

He said his strategy was for government IT procurement to become smaller, more agile, flexible and efficient, and that open source had a key part to play.

"Legally we're not allowed to specify a product, but we can push open standards and government departments to consider open source," he said.

McCluggage stated that the key savings are likely to be found in desktop productivity tools, none of which is currently open source.

"We have over 600,000 desktop licences across central government, and four to five million in the wider public sector. Therefore the prize is significant in the drive to reduce the overall operating costs of desktops and standardise them," he said.

He was open about the difficulties experienced in the past with larger, more unwieldy ICT procurements, such as the Department of Health's NPfIT.

"[Splitting projects into smaller components] should allow a higher success rate of ICT delivery, and more manageable risks," he said.

He explained that the key ICT challenges for the public sector have arisen through the siloed and fragmented development of IT.

"The NHS has 877,000 devices with 577,000 connections in NHSmail – one of the largest networked systems in the world," said McCluggage, adding that the cost of legacy systems was huge.

He summarised his strategy with three key words – Simplify, Standardise and Automate – explaining that he wants to open silos, enabling the sharing of projects and resources, and an end to the expensive duplication of cost and effort. He also wants to see an end to large, long-running projects with suppliers safely locked in for the duration.

Finally, McCluggage was keen to emphasise the coalition's procurement strategy, stating 25 per cent of government contracts should be awarded to SMEs, a key element of the Conservative manifesto.

The drive for open source was part of the Liberal Democrat's manifesto. McCluggage reaffirmed that all government tenders would be published in full and free of charge online.