In what was its strongest show of support for OSS, the Government's masterplan calls for policies to be put in place in several areas, including procurement, that would favour such software. The masterplan has been a topic of debate among ICT companies, local and foreign, that supply goods and services to the Government.
Its objectives include reducing total cost of ownership and increasing freedom of choice in the public sector, as well as reducing the digital divide through the use of OSS, software in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/ or modification free of charge.
Proprietary software, like Microsoft Corp's Windows, is tightly-controlled by its owners and only licensed to users under strict conditions of use.
Under the masterplan, OSS procurement "should be based on merits, value for money, transparency, security and interoperability."
However, it also states, "in situations where advantages and disadvantages of OSS and proprietary software are equal, preference shall be given to OSS."
The move looks set to generate more controversy, especially as some vendors argue that a preference-based procurement policy would be unfair.
Asked about the concerns of these companies, Tan Sri Samsudin Osman, Chief Secretary to the Government, said the Government was committed to the masterplan and suggested that suppliers would have to follow its lead.
He was speaking at the launch of the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC) that would serve as the focal point of all OSS-related activities in the country, and also part of the masterplan.
The centre would be "the main reference point, the pulse that drives (the Government's) OSS implementation," he added.
The masterplan's near-term targets that might have an immediate impact on public sector suppliers include having 60% of all new servers able to run OSS operating systems, 30% of office infrastructure -- like e-mail, DNS, proxy servers -- on OSS, and 20% of school computer labs to have OSS applications such as productivity suites installed.
All this must be done by next year.
The masterplan, which was developed by the Government IT and Internet Committee (GITIC), was approved in February and is now being implemented.
Share and share alike
The OSCC, operational since June 1, has several core functions, including maintaining a repository or "knowledge bank" for all OSS information and news, and to serve as a platform for sharing and collaboration.
The centre will also coordinate OSS training and certification programmes for the public sector, conduct R&D with institutions of higher learning, and undertake promotional and awareness activities.
Samsudin said the centre would also serve as the hub for a local OSS community comprising nine institutions of higher learning, the National Institute of Public Administration (Intan) and Multimedia Development Corporation to drive activities at the national level.
Datin Paduka Nazariah Mohd Khalid, Director-General of the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu), said the centre was a significant effort "to enhance service quality and efficiency in the public sector."
Currently, a total of 54 government agencies are using OSS, mostly applications such browsers, e-mail clients, file and print servers, firewalls, domain name servers and applications servers, she said.
Only 10% were using OSS desktop applications such as productivity suites and operating systems, she added.
The users comprise 14 ministries, 14 federal departments, 16 statutory bodies and 10 agencies at State-level.
Nazariah also said that a recent survey conducted among government agencies showed that there were many areas in which OSS use could be enhanced.
"The results of the survey were very encouraging," she said, adding that feedback from the 33 agencies that participated showed many were keen to explore OSS use further.
The agencies identified over 200 instances in which OSS use could be intensified. These included applications development, distributed enterprise implementation, infrastructure use, high-performance computing, desktop use, and workload consolidation.
"This showed that there was a need to quickly make available technical training and assistance to enhance OSS expertise in the public sector," said Nazariah.
"The development of the OSCC is therefore timely."
She added that in the one month since it became operational, the centre has trained 54 public sector employees, while more than 160 have registered to use its knowledge bank.
"I'm confident that the number will increase after this," said Nazariah.
Autor: RASLAN SHARIF
Quelle: The Star, 16.07.2004
