FutureGov speaks to Laurence Millar, former Government CIO of New Zealand and Gunnar Hellekson, Chief Technology Strategist for Red Hat’s US Public Sector Group, for their perspectives on the UK Government’s latest move.
“I think the landscape has changed considerably in the five years since I was GCIO. At that time, it was a choice between Microsoft Office suite and Open Office for the desktop,” says Millar.
“Microsoft Office was the de facto standard. When you added up the total expenditure on Microsoft products it came to a big number, but not quite big enough to warrant the level of disruption that would be required to move.”
Fast forward to today, several factors such as Big Data, Mobility, and Cloud have changed the equation. These three, according Hellekson, are the future of computing, and are all fuelled by very dynamic open source projects and an ecosystem of open standards.
Millar adds that since many agencies are facing a substantial investment to move from Windows XP, which will not have any technical support or security patches from next month, governments are now considering to move similar proprietary software away from its project scope.
“Openness means easier access to innovation from good ideas that come from global communities, rather than a single company,” notes Hellekson.
“If governments are using proprietary software, they are cutting themselves off from some very smart people who want to help. However, if they use open source, they are making themselves available to that intelligence and that enthusiasm, and can use it to improve the services that they deliver.”
Apart from looking to save millions of pounds a year from expensive software subscriptions and licenses, Cabinet Minister Francis Maude also hopes to break what he calls an “oligopoly” of IT suppliers in the public sector.
“The point that Francis Maude makes, which I think is very powerful, is that the use of multiple suppliers creates diversity which in turn drives innovation. It is a fundamental principle that any ecosystem needs diversity to thrive, and an open system is the most diverse,” explains Millar.
Hellekson adds: “Open source and open standards help governments create a level playing field. It means lower costs by eliminating license fees and encouraging competition. The future is definitely open, so it only makes sense for the UK government to make themselves available to all the benefits that open source and open standards provide.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Clarice Africa
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 24.03.2014
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