With this in mind, the Western Cape government is moving from a neutral to an aggressive phased open source approach.
At a seminar hosted by the Cape IT Initiative (CITI) last week, entitled "FOSS: An Opportunity to Rise to Fame or Are We being Misguided?", delegates heard how the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape government were looking to phase in open source as well as skill up their staff in OS support. "Africa needs to enter the information age as a developer and not only a consumer. There has been much development, but Africa still needs to spend less money on buying proprietary software if it is to compete internationally," said Mymoena Sharif, e-governance manager for the City of Cape Town.
Sharif went on to say that the level of free software was an indicator of good governance and sustainable development in national cooperation policies in government.
Sharif said Cape Town has a number of initiatives in various stages of implementation that demonstrated the city's commitment to open source software.
The Smart Access project has seen 17 000 open source users and 490 workstations, while the Library Standardisation Project is looking to use OSS as an alternative to replace their existing public access library system(PALS) which Sharif said is expensive to run.
The local government is also using the Patient Health Records Management System which is integrated into the Provincial Health system and allows for a single file view of all patients. The local content management system uses open source software such as Linux and Sharif said the system has proved more cost effective and allows for easy and speedy modification.
"The opportunity exists for Cape Town to become a developer and not just a consumer, however, there does need to be some venture capital expended to promote SMEs in an open source cluster," said Sharif.
Competency Centre
Exiting news for open source developers, and indeed all of Cape technology development, was the announcement of a FOSS competency centre at 44 Wale Street in the city centre. This will serve as a reference centre and will operate as a facilitator to ease OSS implementations.
Sharif ended her presentation by looking at possible next steps, commenting on the need to establish a focus group on the role FOSS can play in e-government, the promotion of FOSS in learning institutes, the need to increase the government OSS skills base and the creation of a database of OSS competent companies.
Kayode Adesemowo, technologist at the centre for e-innovation at the Provincial Government of the Western Cape followed Sharif, reiterating the need for OS skills development in local government.
Adesemowo also told delegates that his department was implementing OSS in a layered fashion, bit-by-bit as he skilled up his staff. While this may not save money in the short term, he reckons that mid- to long-term definite cost savings will be realised.
"The government will be looking to implement OS, but we remain pragmatic in all our business decisions. We are looking to move from our current position of 'neutral' in OS implementation to a more 'aggressive' stance," Adesemowo explained.
The provincial government is currently implementing GNU/Linux on selected desktops and is looking for an OS alternative for Livelink -- the document management system. It is also currently doing a skills audit and will be establishing a FOSS R&D competency centre.
In line with its drive to promote OS, Adesemowo also told delegates that the 10th of September will be declared 'Software Freedom Day' in collaboration with the University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape.
Andre van der Post of the South African Revenue Service closed the list of speakers, focusing on the role of government in driving new ideas and innovation -- particularly in the area of OSS.
"Government has a unique ability to change the popular attitude. They can take the risk and push the boundaries," said van der Post.
"This is very necessary, because at the moment the average age of software developers is between 28 and 32, whereas the average age of OS software developers internationally is between 16 and 21."
Van der Post says this is because international coders have the trust of their communities.
"Unfortunately there is still a lack of trust of young developers and South Africa cannot afford for this to continue if we want to remain globally relevant. South Africa must adopt a new attitude to OS. open source is there, right now for the enterprise, it is the strategic path with business relevance and we must be prepared to change our thinking to accommodate this," he concluded.
Quelle: Tectonic, 15.08.2005
