In an effort to cut costs and use taxpayer money more efficiently, the government of the UK intends to increase its adoption of open source software. A report issued Wednesday by the Chief Information Officer Council outlines the benefits of using open source in government IT and establishes a roadmap for improving procurement policies so that they are more conducive to open source adoption.

In the report, digital engagement minister Tom Watson says that the collaborative development model and the high potential for code reuse inherent in open source software deliver real value. Since the UK government's initial push for internal open source adoption in 2004, Linux and open source technology have become a critical part of the government's IT infrastructure.

"Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades: it has shown that individuals, working together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations," he wrote in the report. "It has shown how giant corporations themselves, and Governments, can become more innovative, more agile and more cost-effective by building on the fruits of community work; and from its IT base the Open Source movement has given leadership to new thinking about intellectual property rights and the availability of information for reuse by others."

The UK government's current policy, which was authored in 2004, is to "seek to use Open Source where it [gives] the best value for money to the taxpayer in delivering public services." This put open source on equal footing with proprietary technology in the government procurement process and replaced anachronistic policies that emphasized commercial solutions.

The government is now updating that policy and taking it a step further with new standards. According to the new policy, the procurement process will now favor open source solutions over proprietary ones in cases where other relevant factors are equal. The policy requires the negative impact of vendor lock-in to be considered when proprietary technologies are evaluated and it requires the deployment, transition, and maintenance costs to be considered carefully when open source solutions are evaluated.

"Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility," the policy says. "The Government will, wherever possible, avoid becoming locked in to proprietary software. In particular it will take exit, rebid and rebuild costs into account in procurement decisions and will require those proposing proprietary software to specify how exit would be achieved."

Further, The government will also categorically require compliance with open standards in the products that it purchases, regardless of whether the products are open source or proprietary. To facilitate the development of open standards and encourage interoperability, the government will actively support the development of open standards and specifications.

The policies are pragmatic and beneficial to the government as a consumer of IT products and services. They will leave plenty of latitude for choosing the best possible solution—open, proprietary, or a mix of the two—on the basis of value. They emphasize the inherent flexibility advantages of open source software while also acknowledging the potential for hidden costs. Beyond the scope of the distinction between proprietary and open solutions, the report also affirms the need to encourage a procurement culture that focuses on open standards, broad reuse, and long-term sustainability.

The budgetary constraints imposed by the current economic downturn give governments a big reason to look at open source solutions which have the potential to reduce costs and increase flexibility. We have seen similar moves recently from major governments around the world. Governments in Asia and South America are already enthusiastically embracing open source technology. Europe and North America are beginning to move in that direction, too. The government of Canada also recently began the process of investigating the advantages of emphasizing open source software in its own procurement policies.

The UK seems to be moving to join this trend, but the lack of a timeline in the policy's action plan has led some open source vendors to question whether the government is really committed to rolling out its new rules.

Listing image by Justin Marty