Re: [sheflug] Government open source policy

[Richard Ibbotson <richard [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David

>UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones
> in IT
>procurements. Contracts will be awarded on a value for money basis.
>• UK Government will only use products for interoperability that
> support open
>standards and specifications in all future IT developments.

Yes.  Admirable stuff :)

>and the title of the document is
>
>OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
>Use within UK Government

Wish I could be optimistic. After six years of trying to get someone 
in the right place in this country to do something sensible it's a 
lot like sawing your own foot off.   If this were Germany or France I 
would be much more upbeat about my comments towards Government and 
use of Free software.  I'm off to Massachusetts and Boston in a few 
weeks.  Be interesting to see what happens there.   These are the 
people who want to see the U.S. Government replace the other 
companies software with FOSS.

http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=mg2homepage&L=1&L0=Home&sid=massgov2

Do a search on "open source software" using the search box at the top 
right hand part of the screen.   This in no way helps this 
conversation or anything in the UK.  Just helps to point to the kind 
of things that other people are doing.  In contrast you might look up 
Los Angeles city council.  L.A is the centre of the world as far as 
FOSS is concerned due to the fact that the film industry uses Linux 
and nothing else for film production.  But, the city council downtown 
would seem to be thouroughly tied into that other companies software.  
Rather than go the full mile in the way that they have in Beverly 
Hills and in the film industry they talk about partial replacement 
and  - Oh look ! there's a nice man who has talked about 
OpenOffice.org today. 

>My MP is Angela Smith. Maybe she's nicer than yours!

She's helpful but I get the strong feeling that she is held down by 
someone else when it comes to the implementation and use of Free 
software in Government.  Might be that she needs some gentle pointers 
of some sort ?  I've tried that with other MPs.  Didn't work.


-- 
Richard

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