Free/Open Source Government: part 1

Several events for me in the last fortnight converged almost perfectly on a common theme

  1. On Thursday 28 March The Register reported from an anonymous source, that the British Standards Institute (BSI) would reverse their vote on the proposed DIS 29500 standard from ‘No - with comments’ to Yes. In response John Pugh MP, Liberal Democrat member wrote a letter to the BSI Director urging BSI not to vote yes.
  2. On Tuesday 1 April Pieter Hintjens, former FFII president gave a talk on ‘Software Patents and Open Standards’ at the UKUUG Spring 08 conference.
  3. On Wednesday ISO announced that Microsoft OOXML/Ecma 376 is to be approved as DIS 29500.
  4. On Thursday David Cameron MP, Conservative leader gave a speech on ‘Innovation and its role in public policy’ to NEST. He said a Tory government would open UK government data and “We also want to see how open source methods can help overcome the massive problems in government IT programs.”
  5. On Thursday evening Material World broadcast ‘Redefining the Kilogram’ on efforts towards a better international standard of mass and weight.

The theme is how the Free/Open Source software movement might aid the political establishment.

Civil Service

I’ve worked as a civil servant for nearly 5 years; first as a system adminstrator, then a DBA. I’ve seen and provided input to the lower levels of IT decision making & procurement within an executive agency. From afar I’ve followed media coverage of projects such as the NHS National Program for IT (NPfIT) and the former Child Support Agency (CSA) payments system. In that time I’ve learned that Yes Minister is comic genius & still highly applicable, to a civil service that is very conservative (with a small c) about novel ideas. Large government IT projects typically deliver late, over spend or under perform. Microsoft and other large providers of closed source software are so deeply entrenched in central government, that by default they’re seen as the only choice, if any choice is recognised

Open Source

The civil service has made moves toward F/OSS, in 2004 the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) released a policy document that stated:

“UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements. Contracts will be awarded on a value for money basis.”

I’ve never seen a case where this has been put into practice. With the recent conservative announcement, all parties have made noises to some degree about use of F/OSS. It would appear it is entering the consciousness of the political establishment. However, more pertinant than the issue of Free/Open Source software is the issue of how much choice the civil service & government has in their software purchase. Currently the choice is close to zero, because every team, agency, MP and department have enourmous silos of Microsoft Office documents. Word, Excel, Powerpoint & Outlook are the defacto industry standards. They’re proprietary, meaning that a single company controls them. Until this changes we are all at Microsoft’s mercy.

Open Standards

The International Organisation for Standards (ISO) made a delayed announcement on Wednesday that baring any appeals, Microsoft Office OpenXML (OOXML) will become DIS 29500. It will join the existing OpenDocument Format (ODF)/DIS 26300 as an international standard for document storage and interchange. MS OOXML passed amid widespread process & voting irregularities amongst the national standards bodies. Accusations of improper behaviour have been made against against ISO, Microsoft & ODF supporters. As part of the Microsoft anti trust investigation, the EU has asked questions of Microsoft and the national bodies regarding voting on OOXML. This relates to the kilogram, currently defined by a lump of metal in Paris, because that most basic standard is being improved in the open following rigorous scientific debate & evaluation. Listen to last Thursday’s material world of the low down, but I’m confident the new kilogram standard will be trusted by all. Like the kilogram, the standard for our office documents is central to our society. Billions in trade and public expenditure are dependant on the software we choose and the standards to which it conforms. If we can’t that trust the standard is sound then we can’t have the freedom to choose our software. Our software will continue to control us, instead of putting us in control.