UK: Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan

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Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan

"Re-use as a practical principle: Learning from others is a key aspect of the CIO Council’s operating principles. Where open source solutions are evaluated and approved by one part of Government, that evaluation should not be repeated but should be shared. To support this, Departments will keep and share records of their approval and use of open source, including open source components within composite solutions."

"Open Standards: The Government will specify requirements by reference to open standards and require compliance with open standards in solutions where feasible. It will support 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 will work to ensure that government information is available in open formats, and it will make this a required standard for government websites."

Full announcement here:


http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformational_government/open_source/action.asp

Also reported as:

Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: UK Government Policy

"The U.K. government is stating that it can clearly see that Free Software development principles of cooperation and transparency are beneficial and save money, and the U.K. Government is stating that it wants more of that, in no uncertain terms, when it comes to the infrastructure that is now running the Country and on which its citizens now so critically depend. "


http://www.advogato.org/article/1002.html


Government promises more open-source use

"The UK government could save millions of pounds every year if it made more use of open source as part of a competitive procurement system."


http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39618454,00.htm


Government pushes open source with 10-point plan

"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."

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/02/25/235006/government-pushes-open-source-with-10-point-plan.htm


UK really gets FOSS

"In the Policy section, we read even better ideas. Infact we see an idea of calculating the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to its logical conclusion.
Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfil minimum and essential capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements

To summarise:
TCO = license cost + (exit + transition) costs + security costs + transferable costs + support costs + manageability costs

This is where the real TCO of proprietary software will go sky high. For those vendors who love lock-ins, their exit/transition costs will be prohibitive. For those who have poor security or virus prone, you will be held accountable. Then for those suppliers who dictate user unfriendly EULAs which restrict transferability, well ... make it more consumer oriented, or die!"


http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2009/02/uk-really-gets-it.html



U.K. Throws Weight Behind Open Source

""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," the U.K.'s open source action plan states. "

http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/380686/UK+Throws+Weight+Behind+Open+Source.htm



U.K. Endorses OpenDocument Format

"The U.K. government is requiring compliance with open standards when feasible. It will work to ensure that government information is available in open formats and make open formats a required standard for government Web sites under its "Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan." "


http://visualstudiomagazine.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=10644&rss=1

http://gcn.com/articles/2009/02/26/uk-endorses-odf.aspx


Government expands supports for ODF and open source software

""The fact that the UK government will use open standards in its procurement specifications and require solutions to comply with open standards, is a significant development that will ensure competition among multiple competing products on different platforms," said OpenForum Europe chief executive Graham Taylor."

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/02/26/235038/government-expands-supports-for-odf-and-open-source.htm