Government IT suppliers claim procurement system excludes open source - 2/25/2011. Open source vendors unfairly excluded from government contracts - 08 Jun 2011. European public sector IT contracts are unfairly favouring large suppliers such as Microsoft by ignoring the rules governing the use of trademarks in tender requests, according to a new report.
Campaign group OpenForum Europe has analysed more than 400 IT-related tender notices posted to the Official Journal of the EU between February and March 2010. It found that more than one in 10 notices included the use of trademarks within the technical specifications, thereby restricting the firms that could bid for the work. Where tenders were found to include trademarks, the overwhelming majority mentioned ones belonging to Microsoft.
Bertrand Diard, chief executive of open-source data management vendor Talend, called on the UK government to enforce best practice and to encourage fair competition for UK public sector contracts. Platform 10 » Blog Archive » How can the state simultaneously cut budgets, provide better services, and promote growth? “By adopting an Open Government mindset”. All truth passes through three stages, said the philosopher Schopenhauer.
First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Inquires. Cabinet Office pushes suppliers on open source. High performance access to file storage.
UK Government Open Standards Survey. Background The cost of the government’s IT is currently too high and needs to be reduced.
There is a lack of market diversity in existing government contracts. A more diverse market and level-playing field for access to government IT contracts is needed to improve competition, reduce cost and improve public service outcomes. From a user perspective, it is difficult to transfer information and data across government boundaries and systems due to a lack of interoperability between products and services. Citizens, businesses and delivery partners must be able to interact with the government, exchanging information/data across in the software package of their choice and not have access costs imposed upon them by the IT choices which the government makes. Aims Government is therefore seeking to: Government in the market for more open source software - 28 Feb 2011. The government reaffirmed its commitment to open source at a system integrators forum held by the Cabinet Office late last week, but many experts believe the public sector is still too wary of using non-proprietary software.
After attending the event, open source system integrator Sirius wrote in a blog that the government is pushing open source software in the public sector. "The message of the day was simple, and delivered with panache by deputy government CIO Bill McCluggage," said the Sirius blog. "The message was 'We want you to give us open source software, in fact we insist! '. " Analyst for Ovum Laurent Lachal said that apparent enthusiasm for open source is not new, but that uptake remains slow. "This is an ongoing saga, and because the government wants to save money it will continue this way," said Lachal. "However, this is a game and there is a lot of politics involved. Why Governments Should Use Open Source Licensing. Subscribe to this blog About Author Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack.
The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be). Contact Author Email Glyn Twitter Profile Linked-in Profile Here's a wonderful cautionary tale: Systran created a specially adapted version of its Systran-Unix machine translation software for the [European] Commission, calling it EC-Systran Unix between 1997 and 2002. U.K. Comes out for Royalty-Free Standards for Government Procurement. The U.K. has become the latest country to conclude that for information and communications technology (ICT) procurement purposes, “open standards” means “royalty free standards.”
While apparently falling short of a legal requirement, a Cabinet Office Procurement Policy Note recommends that all departments, agencies, non-departmental bodies and “any other bodies for which they are responsible” should specify open standards in their procurement activities, unless there are “clear business reasons why this is inappropriate.” Under the new Procurement Note, “open standards” are defined as standards that: result from and are maintained through an open, independent process; are approved by a recognised specification or standardisation organisation, for example W3C or ISO or equivalent. (N.B. Ban the Microsoft "virus", government told - Public Sector IT. Microsoft web software is like a computer virus in government computer systems and must be banned, a meeting of the British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group heard last week.
Called by Home Office lead architect Tariq Rashid, the meeting formed part of an investigation into why government open source policy has floundered. Rashid got a clutch of executives from the systems integrators who control 80 per cent of the UK's £16-24bn public sector IT industry, sat them before a room full of open source advocates, and asked them to explain why the computer industry had become so stagnant under their watch. Why for example, asked Rashid, had proprietary Microsoft technologies become entrenched in government systems? Open Source Software Hits a Strategic Tipping Point - Laurie Wurster - The Conversation.
By Laurie Wurster | 8:30 AM March 9, 2011 Imagine you’re in charge of software selection for your enterprise, and you’re turning your attention to a specific IT challenge.
It’s a business-critical need requiring software that is capable of some heavy lifting. DWP tears up £330m Fujitsu desktop contract. The DWP has confirmed it has cancelled a £330 million, six year desktop services deal with Fujitsu, that was signed only one year ago.
In the short term, the department will rehire HP, which had been thrown off the deal in favour of the Japanese supplier. The reasons for the termination remain unclear, and all the parties involved declined to comment. It is expected that the contract will go back to tender in the coming months. HP will “continue to run the service” in the short term, a spokesperson at the DWP said, although the supplier declined to provide further detail. A Fujitsu spokesperson said in a statement that the company had “received notification from the DWP that they wish to bring the desktop contract, awarded in February 2010, to an end”. Work had been due to start on 1 September, although none of the parties described what had been achieved so far.
Now read: How skunkworks and SME will shift gov't IT. The government published its latest IT strategy plan on Thursday, pledging to radically alter its procurement practices to help small businesses win more public-sector contracts. It also laid out plans for increasing the use of cloud computing, while reducing datacentre costs by 35 percent over five years. Bill McCluggage, the government's deputy chief information officer, talked to ZDNet UK about the cost-cutting plans. He spoke about the role skunkworks projects will play, the government's views on cloud security and small businesses, and the likelihood of job cuts for IT professionals in the public sector. Q: One of the government's aims is to make procurement easier for small businesses, and it says it wants to become a 'single intelligent procurer'. What does this mean? The Centre for Technology Policy Research 10 years on, will the UK government’s latest policy pronouncement on open source and open standards prove any more successful than earlier attempts?
The Cabinet Office publication of a procurement policy note on open standards for government IT requirements is the latest in a long line of policy requirements concerning both open standards and open source. In 2001, the Cabinet Office commissioned a study on open source and open standards, “Analysis of the Impact of OpenSource Software”. With hindsight, the report seems optimistic: “Within five years, 50% of the volume of the software infrastructure market could be taken by OSS”. Elsewhere, it was more cautious: “[we] recommend against any preference for OSS on the desktop, but also recommend that this issue be reassessed by the end of 2002, by which time early trials of the use of OSS desktops may have generated sufficient evidence to warrant a reassessment” Also:
Open Source Consortium - One Simple Thing. Open Source Consortium - Govt OSS Policy: resilient as a snowflake in June. Standards bodies get precious, Cabinet Office blinks Let's be clear from the off, the open standards procurement policy note (PPN) designed to level the playing fields for open source software (actually: expose Govt ICT costs to the beneficial winds of competition) wasn't all that amazing. As we said the PPN required open standards only "wherever possible". Not only does that include "never" but even if it were possible to use an open standard there was no indication what would happen if a government body chose not to.
Now, on "Friday the 13th" (there's a joke there somewhere) only four months later, we learnt that, really, the PPN was nothing at all: a Cabinet Office spokeswoman said the open standards policy was "not set in stone" Cabinet Office gathers international examples of Big Society. The Office for Civil Society has published a report citing international examples of Big Society initiatives. The aim of the report is to look at how other countries run their public services or organise local community projects that UK citizens or organisations can take inspiration from.
It is not intended to be comprehensive review of what exists but to see how the Big Society is in action elsewhere and provide ideas for adaptation here. Directory.