London Government Accused Of Open Source Inaction
Mayor Boris Johnson has faced Green Party criticism of his open source commitment – but activists say the real problem is with central government
“I am calling on the Mayor to develop an open source action plan for each of the functional bodies in the GLA for which is he responsible,” he added. “The GLA has led the way with the new London Datastore and the website based on Drupal. Now it’s time he made the rest of the GLA family follow.”
Boris Johnson defends GLA’s open source record
Mayor Boris Johnson responded with the claim that Transport for London and the Core GLA are currently leading the way in the adoption of open source technology in Europe, and continue to look for new ways to integrate and invest in open source software.
He acknowledged that the London Development Agency, the Metropolitan Police Authority and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) were trailing in their implementation of open source technology – but stressed that, despite this, all three bodies were fully committed to adopting open source solutions under the right circumstances.
The LFEPA is constrained by the need to consider the safety implications of integrating open source software into its infrastructure, said the Mayor: “LFEPA systems such as mobilising, HR and Finance rely upon a very high degree of integration,” he said. “There will no doubt be opportunities for the introduction of open source software in the future and consideration of such will become a business as usual activity.”
Open source activists agreed with the Mayor, saying that in fact the GLA has done better than most organisations in adopting open source.
“Of course there is room for improvement, but with huge swathes of the UK public sector using no open source whatsoever [the GLA is] a curious and non-obvious target,” said Mark Taylor, chief executive officer of open source consultants Sirius Corporation and founder of the Open Source Consortium in an email to eWeek Europe. “The lack of clarity, sincerity or guidance from the current government about its ‘open source action plan’ is a far better target, a point which appears not to be lost on the Mayor given his answer.”
“I am personally aware of some great policy work that the Greens have done around Open Source, Open Standards and Open Data, but in my opinion this attack is way off base,” he added.
In June last year, it was found that the UK was still lagging behind the rest of Europe when it came to open source, even though the recession has increased pressure for its adoption.
But Darren Johnson reiterated his criticism: “The basic point is that it was six years ago that the Cabinet Office published its first action plan and saying there are still plans ‘in the pipeline’ isn’t good enough,” he said. “It is clear that nothing is likely to happen without some major push towards progress”.
“We support open source development in Green Party policy as part of the promotion and support of culture and innovation. We’ve also said we want all public sector publications to be made available free to all in open standard formats. This would essentially mean the Crown Copyright would cease to exist.”
Additional reporting by Miya Knights
