Tom Watson MP – Minister for Digital Engagement, has released a detailed and forward thinking plan that should radically impact the procurement processes within the UK Public Sector.

The key objectives of this plan are summarised as follows:

  • ensure that the Government adopts open standards and uses these to communicate with the citizens and businesses that have adopted open source solutions
  • ensure that open source solutions are considered properly and, where they deliver best value for money (taking into account other advantages, such as re–use and flexibility) are selected for Government business solutions.
  • strengthen the skills, experience and capabilities within Government and in its suppliers to use open source to greatest advantage.
  • embed an ‘open source’ culture of sharing, re–use and collaborative development across Government and its suppliers, building on the re–use policies and processes already agreed within the CIO Council, and in doing so seek to stimulate innovation, reduce cost and risk, and improve speed to market.
  • ensure that there are no procedural barriers to the adoption of open source products within government, paying particular regard to the different business models and supply chain relationships involved.
  • ensure that systems integrators and proprietary software suppliers demonstrate the same flexibility and ability to re–use their solutions and products as is inherent in open source.

As a company, we have already implemented a number of open source content management projects within the UK public sector, and in fact ran our own UK Government event on the subject last year.

So this is an issue that is close to our hearts, and I constantly find that I am debating and discussing this very issue, many times over in relation to the procurement of enterprise content management solutions with Government officials in the UK.

I think this is an excellent move from our Government, and in fact puts us ahead of our counterparts in the US. The open source debate is still very much a discussion point in the US as I understand it, and as yet the Barack Obama team has not yet taken such a bold stance. The BBC published an interesting overview on where the US Government are at here.

So, all in all, excellent … may this prove to be a powerful factor in ensuring that open source technologies are considered alongside their commercial counterparts, and as we continue to promote the Alfresco open source content management system to the UK Public sector, I hope the following statement from the report holds true –

Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility.

You can read the full report here