The UK government can reduce cost and risk by migrating to open source

When will the public sector learn from the private

MAIDENHEAD, UK - January 28, 2010 - The news announced yesterday by the UK government that it expects to make savings of £3.2 billion annually from 2013/14 on made through transformation in public sector information technology has been broadly welcomed by open source specialist Talend, and more generally by the entire open source community in the UK.

Bertrand Diard, Co-founder and CEO of Talend, commented: “The announcement that the government’s ICT strategy will focus on a smarter, cheaper and greener public sector ICT infrastructure should be welcomed by both the industry and tax payer alike,”

“Under the IT Strategy the government intends to create one secure, resilient and flexible network which will enable every area of government to adapt their ICT to best deliver for the public. However it appears that they are still wedded to the ICT solutions of the past.”

“Critically for the first time, the plan intends to bring together all government departments, local government and wider public sector organisations to remove unnecessary overlaps between departments and avoid the costly duplication of IT,” he continued.

“The intention is to deliver efficiency savings by increasing the use of online services, streamlining contact with the public and reducing digital exclusion. The challenge will be to deliver just that and not just another IT White Elephant on the scale of the NHS IT Programme for Change, now costing £12 billion, £8 billion over budget and eight years late,” he added.

According to a recent policy document from the Conservative Party, Delivering Change: IT that Works, the UK government spends more per capita than any other government on ICT.

Bertrand said: “Having spent £108 billion on ICT in just eight years, it is clear that the UK government needs to assess its current spending activity. The Rowntree report “Data Nation” in March 2009 examined 46 large UK public sector databases and concluded that a quarter of the public-sector databases reviewed are almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law. It recommended that the current databases should be scrapped or substantially redesigned.”

“Considering that this assessment included the National DNA Database and National Identity Register, ContactPoint, it is outrageous that more than half had significant problems with privacy or effectiveness and could fall foul of a legal challenge. Service levels and security need to be significantly improved as the recent blunders could be detrimental to the nation,” added Bertrand.

In 2009, the UK government took a positive stance towards reducing IT spend by encouraging the use of open source in government IT systems. In recognition of some of open source software’s true benefits, the government updated its policy and introduced an action plan to drive the adoption of open source tools.

Bertrand responded: “The government is still resistant to open source tools despite its stated aim to adopt open source. Open source software does pass a number of complex tests to be accepted by the community. In fact, open source products are put through greater testing before GA release than proprietary based products,”

“At Talend for example, over 1,000 of our community members are involved with testing milestone beta releases. And a recent study by independent analysts has proven that open source database MySQL has ten times less defects than Oracle!” added Bertrand.

One of the major benefits of using open source software is that in having such a passionate community of followers, the software is constantly being developed and improved. In contrast, proprietary software’s code cannot be developed by its users to meet evolving business needs and can therefore become dated within a matter of months.

These arguments stress that open source is a professional and supported offering. With open source being able to integrate with legacy systems, risk is automatically reduced as organisations no longer need to spend massive amounts of IT budget on replacing major IT systems that may only be required in the short-term.

Bertrand said: “It is no longer acceptable for the UK government to continue spending such huge volumes of money on poor ICT, when there are cost effective and adequate alternatives such as open source solutions.”

“The government has been presented with the opportunity to dramatically improve the current databases and slash ICT spend by adopting open source solution where possible, enabling the public money to be put towards improving other vital areas. The next few years will prove valuable in determining whether they take this opportunity or not,” Bertrand concluded.

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