Government Wants Open Standards For IT Procurement

The government is keen that open standards should be sought whenever it is procuring IT equipment, a recent policy note has revealed.

“When purchasing software, ICT infrastructure, ICT security and other ICT goods and services, Cabinet Office recommends that Government departments should wherever possible deploy open standards in their procurement specifications,” reads the note.

The advice applies to all government departments, their agencies, and non-department bodies, and any other bodies they are responsible for.

Reducing Lock-in

The note further states that “government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and businesses.”

“For this reason, government departments should ensure that they include open standards in their ICT procurement specifications unless there are clear business reasons why this is inappropriate,” it said.

The desire for open standards and open source technology, as well as the avoidance of proprietary lock-in has long been expressed by governments, whatever their political persuasions.

In January 2010, for example, the then-Labour government issued a policy document that said that public sector IT spending could be cut by around £3.2 billion a year by more effective use of open source, as well as energy efficient technologies and cloud computing.

Open Source Commitment

Despite this, both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who were then in opposition, were widely regarded by experts as being way ahead of Labour on open source, especially considering the huge amount of money Labour spent on failed IT projects during its period in power.

This commitment was supposedly carried over when they came to power. In September last year the Coalition government made clear its intention to buy open source software, and that it would buy open source rather than proprietary software when the costs are similar.

That move was welcomed by some in the open source community, but others described the government’s open source policy as “toothless,” as it is not policed effectively, leaving UK public sector in thrall to greedy proprietary software vendors.

Whatever the merits of the argument, it is clear that Britain’s use of open source in the public sector is one of the lowest in the world. This was highlighted last August when the government opted to stick with Internet Explorer 6 on its computers, despite its well documented security risks.

Indeed, the UK has some way to go to catch other countries such as Holland and Hungary, which allocate a proportion of their IT budget to open source.

The Cabinet Office Business Plan, published in last November is already working to define a range of specific open standards and procurement practices for ICT goods and services.

A consultation  will apparently commence shortly.