Bristol City Council expects to save £1.4m over the next
five years by switching to StarOffice desktop
applications.
The council sees the move as part of an ongoing drive to meet
the government's requirements for improved efficiency in the public
sector as set out in the Gershon Review.
The council plans over 5,000 users from the authority's existing
mixture of Corel Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Office
software to Sun Microsystems' integrated StarOffice 7 suite.
Councillor John Bees, the council's Executive Member for Central
Support Services, agreed the move at his executive meeting
yesterday (15 November).
Most council departments will transfer to the new software,
although some 1,800 desktops in the city's education service -
including schools - will remain on Microsoft Office for the time
being. This is because preferential financial terms that Microsoft
currently offer for their product licences to educational
establishments, have not been extended to other public sector
users. Education users will have access to StarOffice if they
require it.
A limited number of other council staff will retain access to
Microsoft Office applications where they need to manage the few
documents with specific technical features not yet fully supported
in StarOffice.
The decision follows a successful completion of a pilot scheme
run on 600 desktops in the council's Neighbourhood and Housing
Services department.
"This is further evidence that the city council is determined to
be as cost effective as it can in the way it works - while neither
compromising the quality of its services to the public or the
resources available to staff. Our information technology
specialists have spent three years evaluating the options and
investigating in detail the technical, financial and cultural
issues involved in switching the majority of our desktops to
StarOffice. We are convinced that this is the right way forward and
will offer benefits all round," Bees said.
The government is aiming efficiency savings of 2.5% a year for
the whole of the public sector. This target is based on evidence
gathered by Sir Peter Gershon, chief executive of the Office of
Government Commerce, in his review of public sector efficiency.