Kable: Open source | Kable

Data.gov.uk releases open source code

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:30:18 GMT

The central website for the re-use of government data has released custom made software for users

The code is available for anyone to review, use or modify and allows content to be taken from the Comprehensive Knowledge Access Network (CKAN), the back end system used by Data.gov.uk to store information about all the data released by government.

Code from CKAN can then be synced with Drupal, a system used to publish web content, and serves as Data.gov.uk's "front end". People can use it to find datasets and comment on them.

"The code we are releasing is the Drupal module we have built to access/link the data with CKAN. CKAN is a registry of open knowledge package which makes it easy to find, share and re-use open content and data," a spokesperson for the Cabinet Office told GC News.

She also said that the release of the code shows that "the government is serious about following open source principles".

"Open source software is available in source code format under a special kind of licence to anyone who wants to use, study or build upon the code. The principles employed in this are that it is developed in a public or collaborative manner, with developers sharing the code they've changed or built back with the community," she added.

The Data.gov.uk team said in a blog posted on 20 August 2010 that the code also includes comments in the files to assist users with the functionality.

The release of the open source code follows recent design updates that have been carried out on the website to improve functionality for users.

Con Libs will split up ICT deals

Thu, 20 May 2010 09:20:09 GMT

The coalition's detailed plan for government includes Conservative plans to split large ICT contracts into smaller components

The deal, published on 20 May 2010, includes several elements of the Conservative IT Manifesto, with pledges on widening access to procurement and on open source software.

"We will take steps to open up government procurement and reduce costs; and we will publish government ICT contracts online," the document says, adding: "We will create a level playing field for open source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components."

It also includes the Conservatives' plans to require full disclosure online of "all central government spending and contracts over £25,000". There will be a right to data, so all government held datasets can be requested then regularly published.

Councils will be required to publish all items of spending above £500, and "to publish contracts and tender documents in full," as well as meeting minutes, local service and performance data.

"We will ensure that all data published by public bodies is published in an open and standardised format, so that it can be used easily and with minimal cost by third parties," it adds.

Details of every UK project receiving more than £25,000 of EU funding will also be published.

The agreement also includes a commitment to "stop plans to force the regionalisation of the fire service," which may affect or end the FireControl programme of regional fire control centres.

It also confirms detailed plans on civil liberties, although the government will retain the e-Borders system, reintroducing exit controls (full story).

Stephen Roberts, head of market intelligence at Kable, commented: "The Conservative IT strategy was well publicised and apparently it has survived the transition from opposition to coalition government unscathed.

"While much in the document is laudable, it represents less of a step change than one might think. A presumption in favour of open source, all else being equal, was Cabinet Office policy under the previous regime. The battle to win the hearts and minds of CIOs is still one for the open source industry to fight.

"The move towards smaller components within IT projects follows the current direction of travel within Whitehall IT: the large infrastructure roll out challenges are on their way to being solved, and the applications investment which follows it comes in smaller chunks. Tellingly, this doesn't suggest that existing projects will be split up. The 'disaggregation' of current contracts, much feared by some ICT vendors, is a threat which may recede."

The new government: pledges and problems

Mark Say — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:57:59 GMT

The change in government promises some new policies on the use of IT

As with any new government, the coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is eager to blow the trumpet of radical change. Its initial announcements include commitments on a number of IT programmes, and there were pre-election indications of changes in policy on procurement and project management. If everything is implemented it would justify the 'radical' label, but would also present some problems that have not yet been widely acknowledged.

It was inevitable that the coalition agreement would focus on the headline issues, and no surprise that it involves a commitment to abolish a couple of major initiatives. Both parties have vilified the National Identity Scheme, portraying it as a threat to civil liberties, and the ContactPoint children's database, which they say undermines the privacy of children and families, and it is no surprise that these are earmarked for early abolition.

This is going to impress the privacy activists, but the decision on ContactPoint may lead to regrets. It has already won plenty of support in local government, particularly among social services teams, and the next big news story on the death of a vulnerable child could prompt questions about why a system that has been developed to support child protection was so readily dropped.

More surprising is that the Conservatives have gone along with a Lib Dem policy not to go ahead with the next generation of biometric passports incorporating fingerprints. This should not cause any problems in complying with the US Visa Waiver Programme, as this only requires a facial biometric on the passport's chip; but it will move the UK further out of step with European countries in the Schengen Agreement.

These are providing visitors with biometric visas with which they can move around the signatory countries, and the use of fingerprints in passports is becoming more common in the EU. Standing back from this will satisfy those who are nervous about greater integration with Europe, but the lack of a common approach will undermine efforts to identify people across the continent, something on which law enforcement agencies place a premium.

A question mark hangs over another programme related to law enforcement, with the pledge to end "the storage of internet and email regulations and email records without good reason". This could indicate the abandonment of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), about which both parties have been critical, but the reference to "good reason" suggests they are now hedging their bets. Any party entering government will quickly become careful not to be seen as soft in preserving national security or fighting organised crime, and dropping both ID cards and the IMP could be seen as giving up too much ground.

Despite these issues, there is a pretty firm consensus among the two parties that the outgoing government went too far in storing data on individuals. It is difficult to see them coming up with any similar schemes in the immediate future, although the pressures of government may produce programmes with familiar elements in two or three years.

On the business side, there is nothing in the coalition agreement on how government should approach IT programmes, and the Lib Dems have had little to say on the subject; which leaves the main clues to come from the Conservative party's IT Manifesto and some of its pre-election statements.

Over the past 18 months the party has picked at the Labour government's approach to using IT, claiming that it was excessively fond of big, ambitious programmes that gave too much to the big systems integrators, often fell well short of their aims and wasted taxpayers' money. It has warned that it is going to impose an immediate moratorium on planned IT procurements, and is ready to cancel any programmes that are seen to be off course.

This chimes with its argument on the state of public finances – that things are out of hand and need emergency action – but needs careful consultation with the legal experts. Getting out of existing contracts would likely prove to be a tortuous process, creating its own costs and leaving questions as to what would be put in their place. In a couple of years ministers would be taking awkward questions about why they dumped programmes aimed at dealing with problems high up the news agenda.

It is accompanied by a presumption against IT contracts worth more than £100m. This is consistent with the earlier claims in favour of a more modular approach to IT programmes, but it is notable that earlier documents from the Conservative camp advocated a strict limit on the value. The words "presumption against" indicate that the party specialists are already aware that some projects would be unfeasible without a price tag that goes above the mark.

Another potentially problematical element of the IT manifesto is the pledge to provide more power to the government's chief information officer (CIO), notably in implementing policies across government departments. This would do a lot to provide a more integrated approach, and support the spread of shared services, but giving the CIO, based in the Cabinet Office, power over other departments would challenge the civil service's way of conducting business. The move would provoke defensive reactions in some departments, and push the government into a broader fight about the culture of Whitehall for which it is not ready.

Other elements of the plans are less controversial, and in some cases in line with what was already being done. There has been a lot of noise about increasing the use of open source technology in government, but there is little difference between what has been advocated by the Conservatives and existing policy.

The party has also praised the virtues of open data, and apparently will do nothing to disrupt the work kicked off by the Power of Information review. (It's notable that one of its authors, Tom Steinberg, has been advising the party on IT policy.)

The IT manifesto promises legislation on a right to government datasets, and an extension of existing efforts to publish information on issues such as local crime, education and health online. There may be some institutional resistance to this, but the consensus view is strongly in its favour and it is difficult to see the trend being seriously hindered.

Similarly, the pledges to publish online the details of MPs' expenses, the finances of quangos and local authority spending on every item over £500 may upset some of the people affected, but it is in line with the public mood in favour of more financial transparency. And the plan to use technology for a "public reading stage" for parliamentary legislation is likely to win plenty of support beyond Westminster.

This is the first change in government since IT became widely recognised as a core part of its business, and there is enough in the various pledges to point to a notable change of direction. But in a few areas, the new government may find itself heading back to roughly where the old one was intending to go.

A version of this article will appear in the June issue of GC magazine.
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Mark Say

Conservatives pledge public data explosion

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:30:07 GMT

The Conservative manifesto includes plans to publish numerous sets of data, freeze major new ICT spending and abolish ID cards and ContactPoint

The document, published on 13 April 2010, effectively reiterates a number of the party's earlier pledges on government IT policies.

It includes numerous references to data that will be published online if the party is elected. These include details of foreign aid spending, job vacancies in central government, information on the performance of healthcare providers and performance data "currently kept secret" by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

A Conservative government would also create a "public reading stage" for parliamentary bills, where the public could comment on proposed legislation online, a web system for parents "to take action against irresponsible commercial activities targeted at children" and a free online database of exam papers and marking schemes.

"We will create a powerful new right to government data, enabling the public to request – and receive – government datasets in an open and standardised format," says the section on opening data. It claims that this could boost the economy by £6bn.

A Conservative government would also publish online the job titles of every member of staff, organograms showing job positions and the salaries, expense details and meetings with lobbyists of senior officials. It would also publish central government contracts worth more than £25,000, European Union projects in the UK that receive more than £25,000 in EU funding and all local government spending above £500.

Large ICT projects would be opened to smaller suppliers by breaking them up into smaller components. All government tender documents worth more than £10,000 would appear on the Supply2Gov website, a far lower level than that currently used by the Official Journal of the European Union, and a "level playing field" would be created for open source ICT in government procurement.

The party promises to save money through a freeze on major new ICT spending, and by negotiating with major suppliers to reduce costs.

It says a Conservative government would strengthen the role of the government chief information officer and introduce changes to ICT procurement aimed at delivering better value for money.

The manifesto confirms the party's intention to abolish identity cards, the National Identity Register and the ContactPoint directory of all children in England. It pledges to review the scope of the Vetting and Barring Scheme applied to those who work with children and vulnerable adults, to "scale it back to common sense levels".

The manifesto suggests that similar systems may be under scrutiny, and that new ones are unlikely to be created under the Conservatives, claiming that existing databases are a threat to civil liberties.

It also pledges to strengthen the powers of the Information Commissioner, "to penalise any public body found guilty of mismanaging data," require privacy impact assessments and parliamentary scrutiny of any proposal involving data collection or sharing.

The manifesto confirms the party's policy to end the permanent retention of innocent people's DNA. However, it says a Conservative government would collect samples from all existing prisoners, those under state supervision who have been convicted of an offence, and anyone convicted of a serious recordable offence.

Maude calls for 'fundamental rethink' of ICT spending

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:31:15 GMT

The UK government spends more on ICT than any other government, says the shadow minister responsible for reviewing the sector

Francis Maude, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said that if the UK government spent the same per person on ICT as the Scandinavian countries, the cost would fall by 23% or £3bn.

Despite high budgets, Maude said on 5 October 2009 that the history of UK government ICT projects is "littered with budget overruns, delays and functional failures".

He called for a "fundamental rethink" and called for changes including fewer mega-projects and a rigid insistence on open standards and inter-operability.

Maude has appointed Tom Steinberg, who runs the TheyWorkForYou and FixMyStreet websites and co-authored The Power of Information review for the Cabinet Office, to work on the Tories' ongoing review of government ICT.

Steinberg said: "A smarter use of IT by government can do more than just deliver services more quickly and efficiently, it can also open up the institutions of state and make our lives as citizens more effective and rewarding. I am looking forward to being part of this change."

In an interview to be published in the November issue of GC magazine, Maude said: "We are not saying there can never be large projects, but our presumption is that we would look for smaller scale distributed models with a strict insistence on interconnectivity.

"In the case of the NHS, for example, you would expect different units in the health service to be able to do their own thing to a much greater extent, subject to the requirement of connectivity."

On the adoption of open source (OS) software, Maude told GC: "Our preference is to open the way for OS, but not an assumption that OS is the right approach. Open standards we will be fanatical about. We will be insisting absolutely that the capability for interoperability is to be built in."

He also called for more effective procurement and management of projects. "What we have seen in the IT arena is several departments all installing document management systems, all of them bespoke, all of them slightly different. It's baffling to think that they have such unique requirements.

"One department recently put in a document archiving and management system which cost £250m. That is a lot of a money for something that is available off the shelf and if you slightly massaged internal processes could probably be used. But they prefer to commission bespoke."

Cable demands IT cuts

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:54:11 GMT

Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor Vince Cable has called for the dropping of several major government IT projects

In a move that effectively aligns his party with the Conservatives on the issues, he says that dumping the national identity card, England's NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), the ContactPoint children's database and other programmes could provide large savings in public spending and allay concerns over civil liberties.

The proposals come in Tackling the Fiscal Crisis, a wide ranging plan from Cable to reduce the national debt and help promote economic recovery in the UK.

The IT cuts are one of nine areas in which he identifies the potential for savings. "The traditional method of 'salami slicing' with across the board cuts to all services without any priorities being set causes considerable damage to valued services," he says in the report. "Instead, a systematic process of selecting high and low priorities for public spending is needed."

He claims that government has failed to manage complex, information based systems properly in recent years, and that this has led to large cost overruns and created risks around data security.

However, Cable's report has attracted questions over the validity of his claims. Stephen Roberts, principle analyst with Kable, said: "Several of the figures in this report are unreliable, and the assertions attached are often vague. The costs of the Interception Modernisation Programme are generally estimated at £2bn, not £6bn. The estimates of £20bn each for the NHS IT Programme and for ID cards are out of step with all government and independent forecasts. "

He added that UK government is already able to choose open source technology for many of its systems and that the £500m figure for savings is implausible.

"He's suggesting that costs for software could be reduced by almost half. There's a surprising amount of open source software in government already, and there isn't an open source alternative for much of the proprietary software used, so that's hugely ambitious."

Other elements of Cable's proposals include freezing the public sector wage bill, with 25% reductions and no rises for anyone earning over £100,000 per year, an end to civil service bonuses, a radical review of public sector pensions and considering future asset sales.

Fashionable philosophies: ideas influencing government IT

Michael Cross — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:05:00 GMT

Two sets of ideas that could influence government IT

Whether we're blogging, writing for a national newspaper or just nattering in the pub, most Britons feel qualified to offer some analysis of the nation's public sector IT infrastructure. This is followed, usually, by a pithy opinion about what should be done to improve it.

There's good news for such saloon bar pundits. Two fashionable, easy-to-grasp new philosophies are likely to gain traction over the next few months, and both have strong populist and political appeal.

Fashionable philosophy number one we'll call "Let's get stuff free off the web." Here, the idea is that the software that most public bodies need for most of their functions is already available somewhere, open source and for free. The extreme example, which made it in to the It's Our Data report published by the Centre for Policy Studies in July, is to replace the NHS Care Records Service with free-to-user web services such as Google Health.

Although this proposal is most unlikely to find its way onto any party manifesto, there's certainly some traction in more modest applications. Anyone for a Facebook group rather than a corporate website?

Fashionable philosophy number two is less intrinsically populist, not least because in the short term at least it could push up the costs of building IT, but will have strong appeal in some quarters. We'll call it "Build it like the Eiffel Tower." The idea here is that large IT systems should be assembled according to sound engineering values rather than on the "promise big, build quick and debug later" tradition that permeates the web.

The concept has been kicking around for some time, but a new study, Values in IT, makes a compelling and topical case. A group drawn from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the British Computer Society argue that methods are well established for constructing error-free IT systems. The secret is not so much in testing but by building from secure foundations in intrinsically secure steps.

Building bug-free software is only part of what entails. The report proposes that whole projects be run on the lines of "engineering values". This is a challenge.

"Unlike structural or civil engineering projects, where visual plans can be drawn up and shared, for IT projects there is no well established formalism for externalising software design," it says. "This means that the stakeholders have difficulty in communicating and reasoning about requirements and in determining how achievable a particular design might be."

A possible example of this is the NHS National Programme for IT in England circa 2003, when it was assumed that acceptable systems for handling electronic patient records at the point of care were available more or less off the shelf.

Unsurprisingly, the study's main recommendation is that big projects should be put under the control of chartered professionals. Such a person is defined as "a professional who designs and develops systems (in any medium or materials), using methods that justify a high degree of confidence that the costs and risks will be controlled and that the resulting system will have the properties required by its users". It also involves protecting customers from unrealistic expectations.

Is this requirement not catered for in government already, by the IT professionalism strand of Transformational Government? Not so, the engineering values study implies. It notes a confusion between the skills required to make use of IT within an organisation and those needed to develop new systems.

In the latter case, developers "need deep technical understanding of computing and communications technology, knowledge of computing science and engineering methods, and the creativity to combine their skills and knowledge to create a cost-effective and dependable solution to a set of complex requirements."

Restricting development work to such individuals is light years from the "get it out there and let the community fix it" mentality of the web entrepreneur, on whose expertise our fashionable philosophy number one is based.
In the hugely public and increasingly politicised world of government IT, which philosophy should dominate?

The answer, of course, is a blend of the two: the government's big mission critical databases and networks must be constructed to the highest engineering standards, while for systems to support citizen facing interactions where failure is of little consequence, a "get stuff free off the web" approach will be appropriate. The difficult bit, surely, is deciding where to draw the line.

From the September 2009 issue of GC magazine.

Michael Cross

Tories would 'dismantle' NPfIT infrastructure

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:29:51 GMT

Health service trusts would have a choice of IT systems under Conservative Party proposals to overhaul the NHS National Programme for IT

A Conservative government would "dismantle" central NHS IT infrastructure, halt and renegotiate NPfIT local service provider contracts and introduce interoperable local systems.

Hospitals would be allow to use and develop the IT they have already purchased, but within a "rigorous framework of interoperability".

Shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien said: "Local NHS trusts are given little choice over their IT systems, which means that innovation and competition are stifled and trusts are unable to meet the needs of their local patient population."

Passing control of systems to local trusts, said O'Brien, would avoid duplication of spending when trusts pay into NPfIT and then commission their own systems.

He was speaking at a Westminster press conference on 10 August 2009 to announce Conservative policy commitments in response to the recommendations of a review of NHS and social care IT commissioned by the party.

The review, led Dr Glyn Hayes, a former GP and chair of the BCS's health informatics forum, says that NPfIT should not be abandoned, but adapted to meet the needs of patients. A situation where the bulk of data collections bears no relevance to patients care should be abandoned, while clinical systems should be built to focus on patients, not the disease, procedure, speciality or service.

The review says that the government's development of a national database of health records has caused extreme anxiety among individuals and organisations, and that localised electronic health records will enable patients to take a more active role in their own care.

The Conservative Party cited Canada and the US, where patients have the option of storing their records on the web, with a local record also held by the relevant doctor. The party says that Dossia, Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health are already providing systems which allow patients to access and store their own records.

In the US Microsoft and Google use free health records to raise advertising revenue, but O'Brien said the party "do not have that in mind" for Britain.

Open standards and open source software would be encouraged by a Conservative government, with the aim of cutting costs and encouraging innovation.

Addressing the press conference, Dr Evans said that paper records should be a "thing of the past", but that each part of the NHS should be able to choose record systems which suit their own particular focuses, as long as they meet nationally set standards.

Commenting on the Conservative plans, Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary Norman Lamb said: "Giving patients greater access and control over their medical records is an important step forward, but the Tories' proposals do little to alleviate fear over the security of our medical records.

"Today's announcement does nothing to answer the very serious concerns raised by David Davis. This could amount to a Tory government playing fast and loose with our most personal data by placing it in the hands of private companies without sufficient guarantees on confidentiality."

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said: "We have concerns about the security of web-based systems, and the implications of data being held by the private sector. There would need to be very strong safeguards and an accurate audit trail making it clear what changes or deletions had been made to records and by whom."

She added: "We support local decision making, but it is unclear where funds would come from to ensure the smooth integration of online patients records with the systems currently used by hospitals and GPs."

Newham CIO stands down

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:05:52 GMT

Former Society of IT Management (Socitm) president Richard Steel is to leave his post as chief information officer of LB Newham

He confirmed to GC News that he will stand down at the end of July – citing the wish to take a rest and consider what to do next – but remain in his present Socitm positions until the end of March.

Steel served as president of Socitm for the year ending in April, and remains on the organisation's commercial board. He will be replaced at Newham by Geoff Connell, who was interim CIO during Steel's presidency of Socitm.

He has been one of the defenders of the use of proprietary software in local government. In 2003 he chose a Microsoft platform for Newham's modernisation programme after looking closely at open source technology.

Use open source in niches, says CfH

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:55:30 GMT

NHS Connecting for Health is using open source to collaborate with other countries' health services in building specialist informatics software

Ken Lunn, CfH's director of data standards and products, said the organisation is agnostic towards open source software, and uses it where it makes sense to do so.

"The market demand for some of the things we are developing is very small," he told a session at GC Live in London on 10 June 2009, such as medical terminology editing software or messaging that is able to transfer details of medical consultations. In both examples, CfH is helping to develop open source products.

He added that medical terminology software is also being supported by Canada Health Infoway, a government funded informatics body, the US Veterans' Health Administration and bodies in other countries: "We're beginning to collaborate with with a dozen or more organisations around the world, and that number is growing."

Lunn said that he had previously been involved in negotiating intellectual property agreements between different countries' health informatics organisations to develop products, but this was time consuming and of little benefit. "It's not my business to sell software," he said.

However, he said that using open source requires a way to maintain the software, whether through a supplier or competent staff. The software development also requires proper governance, so changes to code are managed.

Lunn added that in other areas, open source is unsuitable. "We use open source where it makes sense," he told the audience. "We will not use open source where there is a better product on the market. For desktops, the cost of ownership is more significant than the cost of procurement."

The argument for open source is more compelling in very small areas, where competition is hard to foster. "If it's a niche market, you can get into a very dependent situation with a supplier," said Lunn. "But there's no right answer."

Levelling the field?

Mark Say, Gill Hitchcock — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:18:00 GMT

The government's flag waving for open source reflects advances that have already been made

Reaction to the government's new policy document pushing the cause of open source software has involved cheers all round, although some of them seem to be half hearted.

The issue was dragged into the political field earlier in the year when Conservative shadow chancellor George Osborne declared his support for a report, which was kept out of the public realm, making the case for wider use of the technology and a "level playing field" in government procurement. It remains to be seen if this will be nullified as a political issue, but the government has portrayed the new document, Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan, as a big step forward on the issue.

Maximum value

Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson actually used some of Osborne's language in his comment on the policy: "Open source software is a not a cure all remedy and is not the only solution to IT questions. However, by levelling the playing field and allowing open source to be as competitive as possible we can ensure that taxpayers get maximum value for money from government IT, something that is more important than ever during the worldwide financial climate."

He said that several government departments already use open source components, and that he hopes the new policy will encourage others to follow suit.

The move has drawn support from industry and the public sector. IT industry association Intellect says it will be important in taking forward the debate on the issue, and welcomed its commitment to openness in procurement.

"We support the government's policy that open source should be used where it makes business sense, where it provides best value for money and where it delivers the best solution and outcomes," it says. "Innovation and value for money can come from both open source and more traditional software business models."

A more cautious view comes from Richard Steel, president of the Society of IT Management (Socitm) and head of ICT at LB Newham. While broadly supportive of the announcement, he expresses reservations about the potential for open source.

"From a Socitm viewpoint we are happy with anything that encourages competition and a mixed economy in the provision of IT," he says, and suggests the government's policy announcement will be helpful in encouraging organisations to think about the options offered by open source. "It's backed up by wider initiatives across government where they are actively seeking more inventive approaches to the delivery of open source."

From a more personal perspective, he cautions that the issue is sometimes clouded by emotion and beset by confusion over the terminology, and that organisations need to look closely at what best suits their purposes. It is all about the procurement of software and organisations need to be clear about their requirements, not choose open source for its own sake.

Stephen Roberts, principal analyst at Kable, says it is a strength of the document that it avoids this mistake.

"The temptation might have been for Watson to make a firm commitment to reducing the usage of proprietary software," he says. "This would not have been a sensible move. Under the existing principle of free choice, open source solutions are the preferred option in some environments while proprietary systems have the edge in others."

Government policy since 2004 has been that decisions on open source should be made on a case by case basis: the public sector should consider using the technology alongside proprietary systems and contracts will be awarded on a best value for money basis. Roberts makes the point that this has already given open source a significant, if not heavy stake in governmental IT – and that there is a possible tension between promoting open source and other areas of government policy.

Existing stake
"As Watson's paper points out, open source components are fairly common as middleware and within large systems in the government IT estate," he says. "Apache is dominant within web servers and the NHS Spine relies on Open Enterprise Server.

"But in other areas, such as application development, more sophisticated departments have been cutting costs by mandating the use of commercial off the shelf software. In the public as in the private sector, organisations with straightforward requirements tend to find the dominant software offerings the cheapest and easiest to run."

It is probably wise not to over-emphasise the degree of change on the policy front, but the fact that the government has seen fit to publish the document, and make positive noises about open source, suggests it will push the possibilities closer to the front of people's thinking. How this fits with the desire to obtain savings by using commercial off-the-shelf products and re-using systems that have proved successful elsewhere remains to be seen.

First published in GC magazine, April 2009.
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Mark Say

Gill Hitchcock

Government makes open source push

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:36:00 GMT

The government has published a new policy aimed at promoting the use open source software in the public sector

It is also aimed at promoting open standards and encouraging the re-use of IT solutions. Measures include an education programme, guidance on procurement from the Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council and assessment of new products.

These are among the 10 points of an action plan that forms the centrepiece of the policy.

There are two other main elements. One is to promote open standards by ensuring systems are interoperable and avoiding getting locked into a particular product when possible. The other is that the government will look at the re-use of what it has already bought and aim to make successful solutions available across government.

The Cabinet Office said these measures will help to provide better value for money for taxpayers.

Among the 10 points of the government's action plan are the following:

- The CIO Council and the Office of Government Commerce will develop guidance to ensure open source (in which the source code of the software is freely available), will be given the same consideration as proprietary products. This will include a specification of compliance with open standards (which makes the standards for interoperability freely available) and advice for public sector purchasers on licensing, warranty and indemnity issues for open source
- The two bodies will also set up a programme of education and capability building in the field.
- The CIO Council will regularly assess open source products for their maturity and recommend those that meet agreed criteria.
- It will also work with systems integrators and software suppliers to open up their solutions to meet open standards, to include open source and facilitate re-use.
- The government will specify requirements by reference to open standards and require compliance with open standards in solutions where feasible.
- Government purchasers will use a standard OGC approved OJEU clause to make clear that solutions are purchased on the basis that they may be re-used elsewhere in the public sector.

Tom Watson, the minister for digital engagement, said the new policy reflects changes to both the open source market and the government's approach to IT.

"The world of technology has moved on hugely since we last set out our thinking on open source, which is why it was so important to update our policy," he said.

"Open Source products are more competitive and have become easier to include in business, and major players in the IT industry now support the use of open standards. Several government departments already use Open source components and I hope this new policy will encourage others to follow suit.

"Open source software is a not a cure all remedy and is not the only solution to IT questions. However, by levelling the playing field and allowing open source to be as competitive as possible we can ensure that taxpayers get maximum value for money from government IT, something that is more important than ever during the worldwide financial climate."

The announcement follows a recent declaration by shadow chancellor George Osborne that the Conservative Party favours the greater use of open source and would take action to prove a "level playing field".

Tories call for IT procurement shake-up

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:39:00 GMT

The shadow chancellor has called for more open source and a £100m cap on IT projects in government

George Osborne said in a speech to the RSA that the party is ready to follow the suggestions of a report by Dr Mark Thompson aimed at delivering better value for money in IT procurement.

He claimed that they would help to save hundreds of millions of pounds and reduce risk in implementing IT programmes.

Although the Conservative Party is not making the report public, it said the one of the key suggestions is that a more open procurement process could save at least £600m per year for government. It related this to open source savings from reduced licensing costs and "freeing government bodies from long term monopoly situations".

It also said that new data standards should be introduced to create a level playing field for open source software, and that these would enable large scale IT projects to be split into small modular components. This would prevent the need for any IT contracts worth more than £100m, and in turn open up the competition to more companies.

Osborne said: "We have led the debate on using open source software in government, and I'm delighted that Dr Mark Thompson has come forward with these detailed recommendations. These proposals aren't just about saving money – they're about modernising government, making the public sector more innovative and improving public services."

The recommendations will now be considered by the Opposition Treasury team and the Conservative Party's Implementation Unit led by Francis Maude.

Thompson commented: "It isn't rocket science – it's about creating a modern and efficient procurement system. Governments and companies around the world are making use of open source software, and we could achieve much more here in the UK."