Thursday 5th November 2009 by James Skinner

Perhaps inspired by the adoption of Drupal by The White House, the Tories this week have announced a lean, mean approach to Government IT projects should they come to power, and will place emphasis on smaller, open-source, user-friendly projects in an attempt to chop some £4bn from current IT budgets.

Two thoughts on this:

1. Open Source doesn't mean lower implementation costs

Well, not necessarily, anyway. The Conservative Technology Forum issued a warning to consultancies and major system developers: tighten your belts. Obviously there are some immediate savings by moving away from proprietary software and its often-expensive licence and maintenance fees, but the way in which such projects are planned managed will determine whether an Open Source implementation delivers any real savings.

Open Source doesn't remove scope creep, excessively complex management structures, procurement red tape or bloated requirements sets that don't actually meet user's needs. We've helped a number of public sector organisations deal with these challenges, and found that contrary to popular opinion, it IS possible to work in an Agile way within the confines of public sector procurement processes, and by identifying the audience and focussing on their direct needs, it's possible to develop a feature set that is practical to implement.

2. Open Source isn't a new thing in the public sector

There's certainly a lot of proprietary software in use in the public sector, but there's already adoption of Open Source technology going on. We've delivered projects using Drupal to both NHS Connecting for Health and the Central Office of Information, as well as local authorities and NHS Trusts.

• There are challenges along the way, as with any project, but the benefits are clear:
• Lower cost of ownership
• No vendor lock-in
• Quicker time to market
• Wide range of ongoing support options

A mandate from central Government to accelerate the move to Open Source will be very welcome, but it would be a shame to overlook the progress that has already been made.