A couple of 'vox-pops' captured by Leon Cych (Learn 4 Life) at the Bletchley Park LA Seminar last Thursday: first Mark Taylor of Sirius IT linking the political landscape and NWLG's exciting initiative to support open source adoption across their 17 authorities and elsewhere.

Second, Gary Clawson, CEO of NWLG on content sharing through the NDRB

Gary writes...

At last weeks Local Authority Open Source Conference organised by OSS, I announced that the 17 North West Authorities under North West Learning Grid intended to pursue Open Source solutions with a primary objective to reduce ICT costs from 2011. The invitation to work together to systematically examine what Open Source can achieve was extended to any Local Authority that also wanted to work with us. There is great sense in this: If there is are content filtering solutions; school administration systems; learning platforms; desktop facilities; server installations that can save us money then we should pursue them as a community and share our expertise and our implementation planning. By doing this we also greatly reduce the risk of replacing costly licenced products with Open Source Solutions.

I would expect a group of LAs working together to be a very powerful force in bringing Open Source solutions to levels that other countries experience.

If there are any Local Authority representatives who think it will be worthwhile being part of a large organised group of Open Source implementers can you please just drop me an email expressing your interest and I'll get together ideas for next steps and share them back with you.