You might find this article I wrote a little over a year ago about attempts to introduce free software into London's regional government:
http://lwn.net/Articles/384863/ Regards, Tom On 7 September 2011 12:35, Jon Grant <[email protected]> wrote: > Lucky the figures were provided in CSV format! > > > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14765545 > > > Can Whitehall open up to open source? > > > What's Whitehall's attitude to software procurement? A cynic might sum > it up as "nobody ever got sacked for buying Microsoft". > > The current government has vowed to change the civil service mindset > that has always preferred to spend money with the biggest firms and > has been conservative about open source software. > > The Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude has vowed to create a level > playing field for open source as part of a drive to cut costs. > > Now a BBC Freedom of Information (FOI) request has given us a glimpse > of how big the challenge will be. > > We asked government departments for details of how much they had spent > on proprietary software over the past year, and how much open source > software they had acquired. > > The responses have been dribbling in for months now (available as a > Google doc, an Excel spreadsheet or as separate .csv files below), and > they've varied from detailed accounts of software and expenditure, to > refusals to provide any information on the grounds that it would cost > too much. > > Our excellent FOI researcher Julia Ross has compiled a spreadsheet of > each department's responses. > Mixed response > > This is not the kind of FOI request that unveils some shocking secret, > but it does provide insights into the kind of software civil servants > are buying, and why open-source providers may struggle to get a > hearing. > > So, for instance, the Home Office provided a detailed list of about > £26m worth of proprietary software acquired over 18 months. > > Of that, £21m went to just one business, Raytheon Systems for "IT, > Broadcasting and Telecoms software". > > It seems extraordinary to push something like 80% of your software > budget to one provider - but who knows whether an open-source supplier > could have provided a product that would have done the job? > > The Ministry of Defence was unable to provide a breakdown but says its > biggest IT organisation DE&S ISS spent £40.7m on procuring software > between February 2009 and March 2011. > > Perhaps not a huge budget for such a big organisation but where did > the money go? > > They do mention a few products - much of it security software like > McAfee Anti Virus - but do not say what individual items cost. > > In its response the department says that, while it is progressively > taking a more centralised approach, "there is no centrally held record > of software (proprietary or open source) held across the MOD". > > There is also a partial list of some open-source products used, > including the Firefox browser - though last time I inquired it seemed > you were more likely to find an ancient version of Internet Explorer > on a soldier's desktop PC. > > By contrast, the Department for Schools did supply quite a lot of detail. > > One item that caught my eye was £164,063 on something called Colligo > Solution. > > This is described as something which will "enhance the > interoperability of Microsoft Office 2003 specifically Microsoft > Outlook/Exchange 2003, with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007" > for all of the department's 3,500 staff. > > I asked Stuart Mackintosh of the open-source firm OpusVL for his view > on what the documents revealed. > > He is on a Cabinet Office committee advising on how open source might > best be promoted in Whitehall, and is not unsympathetic to the efforts > of some civil servants to make this happen. > > But he points to that Colligo Solution software - needed to upgrade an > existing Microsoft program - as an example of the challenges. > > "I don't know the exact story with that product but often they've > already wasted a lot of money in the wrong place," he says. "They're > locked in, and then they need to pay more money to stay where they > are." > Uphill struggle > > He thinks there is a big cultural problem because, while civil > servants know how to deal with big firms like Microsoft and have > existing relationships with them, they simply don't know how to start > with open source. > > "How do you buy something that's free?" he asks. "It's the job of > people like me to help them work it out." > > Mr Mackintosh also believes that by outsourcing so much of its IT > operations, Whitehall has lost the ability to understand what might > work. > > He says: "They need to be able to take a few more risks, but they > don't have the skills internally to assess the software." > > I also showed the documents to Bryan Glick who, as editor of Computer > Weekly, spends much of his time reporting on government IT policy. > > Pointing at the numerous small amounts spent here and there he says: > "It shows how little centralised spending control there is and how > much duplication." > > This, he thought, reinforced what Sir Philip Green said in his > purchasing review last year about government missing out on economies > of scale. > > Bryan was not surprised that many of the government departments could > not give us much detail on their software spending. > > "Where a large private sector firm would almost certainly have some > form of software asset register for audit purposes, there's nothing > like that in Whitehall," he explained, "although they're working on > just that at the Cabinet Office." > > Right now, the idea of trying to work with Whitehall is pretty > daunting to small, open-source providers. > > The good news is that there is plenty of political weight behind > opening the doors to new software ideas - especially if they can save > money. > > _______________________________________________ > Fsfe-uk mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk > -- http://tom.acrewoods.net http://twitter.com/tom_chance _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
