The government is getting serious about using open source as a
building block in systems development.
Yesterday its top IT policy-making body, the CIO Council,
published
a
10
point action plan that frees central and local government
departments to use open source systems where possible.
This is the first review of government policy on open source
since 2004. Since then, some very large government systems have
been built using open sourcve principles. They include the use of
Apache as the core web server by half the main departmental
websites, and the use of open source components in Directgov, the
government web portal, and the Electronic Vehicle Licensing
system.
The CIO Council said the NHS Spine, the private network that
connects NHS trusts, uses an open source operating system. The
replacement of Netware by Open Enterprise Server will mean that 35%
of NHS organisations, covering almost 300,000 users, will be
supported on Linux infrastructure, it said.
The council said it needed to ensure that there was an effective
level playing field between open source and proprietary software
"to realise the potential contribution open source software can
make to wider aims of re-use and open standards".
The key objectives are to ensure that the government adopts open
standards and uses them to communicate with citizens and businesses
that use open source systems.
It wants to ensure that open source systems are considered
properly and are adopted where they deliver best value for money,
taking into account other advantages, such as re-use and
flexibility.
More controversially, it aimed to embed an open source culture
of sharing, re-use and collaborative development across government
and its suppliers.
This idea, given effect in the Coronors and Justice Bill, has
drawn criticism from many quarters, including former home secretary
David Blunkett and the Information Commissioner's Office, for being
too wide-ranging and for defeating the provisions of the Data
Protection Act.
Nevertheless, the council hoped wider use of open source would
stimulate innovation, reduce cost and risk, and improve speed to
market.
The council also hoped to ensure that systems integrators and
proprietary software suppliers showed "the same flexibility and
ability to re-use their solutions and products as is inherent in
open source".
It said it would work with systems integrators and software
suppliers to open up their software to meet open standards, to
include open source, and to facilitate re-use. It would also share
with industry information about current deployments of open source
and testing already performed so that knowledge can be re-used.
On a more practical level, it formally adopted the use of Open
Document Format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) as well as emerging open
versions of previously proprietary standards (eg ISO 19005-1:2005
(PDF) and ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML formats).
It said it would work to ensure that government information was
available in open formats, and it would make this a required
standard for government websites.