The government is setting up a software swap-shop to allow
government departments to use spare software without paying extra
licensing costs.
The pool, the first of its kind, is designed to minimise waste
caused when government departments take out licences for more
copies of software than they use.
The software license pool will be a key component of a
government-wide memorandum of understanding between the Treasury's
Office of Government Commerce and Microsoft.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Buying Solutions agency
is expected to announce internally today a date for the deal to be
signed, 18 months after the last memorandum of understanding (MOU)
expired.
A source close to the negotiations said that re-usable Microsoft
software licences were just a beachhead. The OGC had opened talks
with all major vendors to agree the same terms.
He said it was the first deal of its type and made the UK the
only country in the world whose government had agreed its own
licensing terms with Microsoft.
A Microsoft spokesman said: "The current agreement expires on
30th April 2009, and we will be releasing information on the new
arrangements when they are agreed."
An OGC spokesman said a deal was imminent and that April was a
decisive month, but would comment no further. Since the last MOU
ran out in January 2008, Microsoft licences have been bought under
repeated six-month extensions of the old terms. Talks stuck over
the pricing terms of the collaborative buying agreement.
The Operational Efficiency Programme recommended this week: "A
further £1.6bn value for money savings could be achieved through
the collaborative procurement of IT."