Government wasting money on software, say open sourcers

The Government is spending $2 billion a year on computing budgets, but 80 per cent of that money is spent “just standing still”, experts say.

Chris Daish is the government liaison officer for the New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS). He says a recent survey of Government agencies found 80 per cent of ICT budgets were being spent on operational matters and not moving programmes forward.

“If cost can be taken out of business-as-usual through the use of commodity open source software, that money can be channelled into projects that make a real difference to how you or I interact with the public sector,” says Daish.

However, web technologies strategist for the State Services Commission’s e-Government programme Matthew Ross says that the survey of Government ICTs shows open source software is being considered as an alternative.

“Fifty-seven per cent of organisations that responded to this survey reported that they had a policy of considering open source software,” says Ross.

“Eight per cent had a policy of preferring it. A further eight per cent however, had a policy of not using it at all.”

Daish says the survey results show that the Government’s goal of transforming public sector ICTs to “user-centred services and joint outcomes” by 2010 is not being realised.

Computer professionals use open source software as alternatives to proprietary, or commercial, software.

Bryce Looms is a web designer and developer. He uses a number of open source programmes for work and personal use.

“I definitely support the idea of open source software,” says Looms. “There are often free alternatives to expensive commercial software, so they are bringing great tools to those that may otherwise be without.”

Chris Daish says open source software is the key to the Government moving forward with its ICT use.

Open source software means that the source code, or programme ‘blueprint’, is freely available, so developers can study it and modify it and let others benefit from their improvements, says Daish.

This means that no one party owns copyrights to the software and it can be developed, modified and distributed by programmers all over the world for free.

“Since open source software can be reused across the public sector, the value is significantly greater than traditional commercial software, which agencies pay for over and over again,” says Daish.

However, Mr Looms does warn of the technical nature of some open source programmes.

“I’m not sure all open source software can be promoted as alternatives for non-technical users,” he says.

“Until the open source community brings forth an operating system that rivals Microsoft and Apple in non-technical, user-friendliness — they will dominate the computing world.”

Matthew Ross from e-Government supports this idea, suggesting that “the availability of support can sometimes be seen as a barrier to the uptake of open source software” within Government agencies.