The Cabinet Office has launched the new Government ICT Strategy today, applying across the whole of the public sector. Open source, open standards and re-use is one of the fourteen strands for delivering the strategy, which promises £3.2 billion savings annually from 2013/14.
Last year's Action Plan on open source, open standards and re-use has been revised, with a new version released today, which:
- brings this in line with developments in cloud computing, most notably the G-Cloud (G for government, not Google, this time),
- stops open source from being rejected because proprietary software has been purchased up front, and
- adds a line to say that "If [suppliers] are unable to provide evidence of fair consideration of open source solutions, their bid will be deemed non-compliant with government policy and the proposal is likely to be automatically be delisted from the procurement."
The latter point would have significant implications for BSF and other managed service procurements.
The Government Application Store, sort of like an iphone App Sore but for really, really big apps, is another of the strands. This will offer 'an online portal for the sharing and reuse of online business applications, services and components across the public sector'. If applied to education as well as the rest of the public sector, this could bring big savings and provide a firm basis for interoperability. Given its popularlity in schools, colleges and local authorities, Moodle must surely be a strong contender for the G-AS, as perhaps are other important web-based apps popular with teachers and pupils, such as Drupal, Wordpress and Elgg.
This could mean much more that a level playing field, It will put the tools in the hands of those who need them. Though we still need to make sure that those who need them also know how to use them.
The Governments application store could be an effective way to ensure that pupils in schools are given the tools that they need for their (free) education.
all in all an encouraging step
Having now read the strategy in some detail, I'm a little confused about whether it is policy for Government departments and devolved organisations or whether it devolves down to school level.
Could anyone clarify this, I know what I want it to say but that doesn't make it say it.
I guess my problem with this is that if I'm not clear about this, I have little ammunition to fight for FLOSS against COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software at BSF meetings etc.
The phrase 'all Public Sector' would seem to be a sweeping one - but as you say, when you tunnel in all the references to government sector and devolved bodies may mean something to the politicians and civil servants, but leave the rest of us groping for the boundaries.
Do 'devolved bodies' include government agencies and non-departmental public bodies, such as Becta and Partnership for Schools - one must assume the answer is 'yes'? Local Authorities, undoubtedly, but the LEPs that they are a part of under Capital Programmes?
One approach could be to write for clarification - listing all the many stakeholders in a BSF process where there is an LA with a LEP, and asking specifically whether this applies to them or not? It does seem unlikely that it would cover the type of organisation typically coming in as ICT Provider partner - who offer the hardware/software/facilites procurement within a BSF scheme. But to what extent must their procured solution be required to recognise and take account of the Government ICT Strategy to allow the public sector stakeholders meet their obligations?
I suspect it won't be easy to get this defined and nailed - but a worthwhile push as not doing anything will see the well-financed and traditional models winning through by default.
Tony