According to Victor Lam, Deputy Government CIO of Hong Kong, open source provides government agencies with the capability to be more agile and innovative while effectively optimising the way taxpayers’ dollars are spent.
“The Hong Kong Government has been leveraging open source for over a decade. In fact, we have more than 2000 Linux servers supporting various applications like the e-Government Infrastructure Service, eHRMS system, Government Notification application and www.gov.hk.”
“We recognise the fact that it is the kind of technology we need to be ahead of the curve and keep up with the rapid advancement of technology. In this regard, the government is working with various industry stakeholders to promote the development of open source in Hong Kong through our Digital 21 Strategy.”
The Digital 21 Strategy is a blueprint that maps out the ICT development in Hong Kong. The aim of the Strategy is to outline how the Government, community, industry and academia can work together to achieve their vision of putting Hong Kong in the forefront of global ICT development. The Strategy is a living document that evolves alongside technology and the changing needs of the community. Since it was released in 1998, the Strategy was updated thrice in 2001, 2004 and& 2008.
Lam told FutureGov that in order to further promote the use of open source within the government, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, has laid out a clear procurement strategy in place that lets decision makers choose products based on: value for money, fitness for purpose, functionality, compatibility, support and total cost of ownership.
After the procurement strategy was issued, Lam said they immediately saw many government departments aggressively adopt open source solutions in their IT systems.
“There are many products available in the market - some proprietary and some open source. By having a clear procurement strategy in place, we were able to drive a fair competition among software vendors and open up our choices to the wide array of products available in the market that best fits our requirements.”
“Furthermore, we have also been streamlining our efforts to make sure users are aware of the choices available to them so that we can help them make the most cost-effective purchase . In fact, for our recently deployed Department Portal Project, we used open source for virtually all its components. By doing so allowed us to achieve an estimated cost savings of HK$ 120 (US$15) per user and since this is a whole-of-government initiative, we were able to save a substantial amount of taxpayers’ dollars which we can reinvest in other initiatives.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Clarice Africa
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 21.04.2014
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