Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan

To help bring together the online debate around this Action Plan, we've set up a public page which contains links to blog posts, news stories and tweets about UK government, open source and open standards: http://www.netvibes.com/cabinetoffice#Open_Source. If you write about this online, please use the tag #ukgovOSS to help us find your comment.

7. The key actions for Government are therefore: Action 1: Clarity in procurement: The CIO Council, with the Office for Government Commerce, will develop clear and open guidance for ensuring that open source and proprietary products are considered equally and systematically for value for money. This guidance will be published and will include: (a) [...]

6. The Government's policy is as follows: Open Source Software (1) The Government will actively and fairly consider open source solutions alongside proprietary ones in making procurement decisions, (2) Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership [...]

5. The Government considers that in order to deliver its key objectives a programme of positive action is now needed to ensure that there is an effective "level playing field" between open source and proprietary software and to realise the potential contribution open source software can make to wider aims of re-use and open [...]

1. The Government last formally reviewed its Open Source policy in 2004.1 The policy made clear that the Government would consider open source solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT Procurements and that contracts will be awarded on a value for money basis. 2. Since 2004 the Government has increased its use of Open Source, particularly in [...]