[ubuntu-uk] Public library OS choice

[Nigel Verity]

Dear All

In more than 10 years of working with public sector organisations I have never found any appetite to change from Microsoft products, no matter how the case for open source alternatives is made.

Partly it is because many public/civil servants have not the faintest awareness of any alternative to Microsoft other than Apple, but the single biggest reason I can ascertain is that government IT infrastructures are so big, and there have been so may failed IT projects and disasters over the years, that nobody has the confidence to contemplate such a major upheaval.

Cost saving is not the driver it should be. Most departments still operate their budgets on the "use it or lose it" principle. If they make savings on their allocated funding this year their budgets will be smaller next year.

Politics are also a consideration. Most government IT is outsourced, often to consortiums of the big IT service suppliers. To anybody who operates in the private sector the amount of money they charge government departments beggars belief, but the public sector has been ripped off for so long that the costs are seen as normal. Those consortiums have the ear of government ministers and lobby very very hard. Any new scheme that provided genuine value for money and delivered big savings, whether open or proprietary, would call into question the competence of the decision makers at the top who agreed to the current contracts.

In the short to medium term the best I can foresee in the UK public sector is the adoption of some open standards, but it will be a long time before that translates into a adoption of open software.

One has to pose the question, though, if a department the size of, say, the MOD decided to go open source tomorrow, are there enough technicians with Linux skills and sufficient experience to take on the job? I suspect not.

Nige 
 		 	   		  
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