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New U.S. CIO could be a big win for open source
,----[ Quote ]
| Granted, open source has already made extensive inroads to federal IT.
| Kundra's appointment as U.S. CIO, however, opens the door to new
| competitors--Google and open source among them--even wider. He says he plans
| to take a pragmatic approach to IT spending, but that's all open source needs
| to thrive.
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10190524-16.html
FOSS in government - a Pakistani perspective
,----[ Quote ]
| Though there are various TCO and ROI studies on such cost comparisons in both
| the long and short term and there have been immediate benefits reported by
| many developing (and developed) countries who have switched over to FOSS in
| their government departments.
`----
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/030609-foss-in-government-a-pakistani.html
Recent:
The great British open-source arms race
,----[ Quote ]
| Politicians of all stripes seem to be espousing open source, but that bluster
| must be turned into action — and soon, says Mark Taylor.
|
| First, shadow chancellor George Osborne advocates open source. Now minister
| for digital engagement Tom Watson promises to use more open-source software,
| if circumstances permit. The UK public sector just got interesting again.
`----
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39619198,00.htm
Tories demand publication of Trading Funds review, back free data principles
,----[ Quote ]
| The Conservative Party is demanding that the government publishes the Trading
| Funds Review, while also giving its backing to the concept of free data -
| although it hasn’t quite gone as far as backing the entire principles of the
| Free Our Data campaign.
`----
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/copyright-dogmatism-temporarily-kicked-out-european-parliament
ConsultationXML is now Open Source
,----[ Quote ]
| We’re terribly, fantastically pleased to announce that after a bit of
| wrangling, Steph Gray and I are able to release ConsultationXML as open
| source software under the GNU Affero license. The recent report on open
| source software in Government hinted that departments ought to try to release
| source code for the software they commission, and we’re delighted to be (we
| think!) the first to do so.
`----
http://www.thedextrousweb.com/2009/02/consultationxml-is-now-open-source/
Russian Federation Commits to Open Source
,----[ Quote ]
| Open source software development in Russia is one of the most important
| directives for Igor Schegolev - the Head of the Ministry of Information
| Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation. At a key meeting
| with Werner Knoblich, Red Hat Vice President for EMEA, he announced support
| for a Russian Fedora association and for Red Hat development in the Russian
| Federation. He also expressed support for open source infrastructure and
| applications, and the development of a repository for industry best practice.
`----
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/02/prweb1981634.htm
National Word Processors?
,----[ Quote ]
| Other governments want to be able to switch to other products or actually do
| that. Most of them migrate to Staroffice or [OpenOffice.org] which support
| the ODF format and the old binary doc format out of the box. Government
| agencies understand that a creation of an international standard as ODF was
| crucial to reduce their switching costs, they understood that only strong
| economic pressure would force Microsoft into full ODF compliance. Some
| governments also understand that you have to invest into alternative products
| and migration studies to further reduce the dependencies and built up the
| market pressure for interoperability.
|
| I wonder if Russia will consider to develop its national word processor as
| well. A wise Russian will understand the danger to their national
| independence that a support for the Open XML format instead of ODF bears. If
| they have no opportunity but to chose Open XML it shows that their national
| independence is already compromised.
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-123068/national-word-processors
Russia To Develop a National Operating System
,----[ Quote ]
| "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a
| National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its
| dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will
| base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also
| involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The
| Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through
| an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large
| markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux
| distributions or join in the Russian initiative."
`----
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F23%2F1450224&from=rss
Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan
,----[ Quote ]
| Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT
| and beyond over the last two decades: it has shown that individuals, working
| together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat
| those of giant corporations; it has shown how giant corporations themselves,
| and Governments, can become more innovative, more agile and more
| cost-effective by building on the fruits of community work; and from its IT
| base the Open Source movement has given leadership to new thinking about
| intellectual property rights and the availability of information for re–use
| by others.
`----
http://www.cio.gov.uk/transformational_government/open_source/index.asp
UK Government: Starts The Push For FOSS?
,----[ Quote ]
| Whoa! This comes from the Chief Information Office Council. Yes, the
| Government is so big they can’t have just one CIO like even the biggest
| Enterprise, they have to have a whole council of them ;-)
`----
http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/02/24/uk-government-starts-the-push-for-foss/
UK Government Getting Real About Open Source
,----[ Quote ]
| As billions of bail-out dollars become trillions, it is clear that we need to
| be realistic about the nature and the solutions to our world-wide software
| crisis. Today the world spends more than $3T USD per year on systems that are
| largely based on vendor lock-in, not value and not free and fair competition.
| What is most shocking about the $3T USD number is not its sheer size alone,
| but the fact that fully $1T USD of that number is written off ever year when
| people are forced to abandon their projects before putting them into
| production. The place to fix that problem is not in any specific piece of
| software (most of which has 20-30 defects per 1000 source lines of code), but
| in the fundamental system of competition that is responsible for ensuring
| that malignant software can be successfully removed in the first place. The
| UK Government's decision is a strong step in the direction of properly
| restoring the right kind of competition in the marketplace. The days of
| rewarding past performance, especially the performance of amassing billions
| of dollars based on strategic lock-in, must be put behind us. And we should
| treat any use of such funds for furthering vendor lock-in as extremely
| suspect and worthy of an immediate and full investigation.
`----
http://opensource.org/node/396
Government pushes open source with 10-point plan
,----[ Quote ]
| The government is getting serious about using open source as a building block
| in systems development.
|
| Yesterday its top IT policy-making body, the CIO Council, published a10
|
| point action plan that frees central and local government departments to use
| open source systems where possible.
`----
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/02/25/235006/government-pushes-open-source-with-10-point-plan.htm
UK Government policy update supports open source
http://www.h-online.com/open/UK-Government-policy-update-supports-open-source--/news/112714
Open Source? Labour's Working on It
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| There's no doubt that in the UK the winners so far have been the
| Conservatives, who have seized on open source as a stick with which to beat
| the current government's miserable record on large-scale IT projects, most of
| which have been way over budget at best, and utter failures at worst (with
| some managing both).
|
| This has understandably put pressure on Labour to come up with a riposte, and
| yesterday it was unveiled in the form of something called “Open Source, Open
| Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan” (there's a handy version from
| WriteToReply here, where you can add your comments.
`----
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1918&blogid=14
Labour disingenously adopts Tory position on open source software
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/alex_singleton/blog/2009/02/24/labour_disingenously_adopts_tory_position_on_open_source_software
UK government backs open source
,----[ Quote ]
| The UK government has said it will accelerate the use of open source software
| in public services.
|
| Tom Watson MP, minister for digital engagement, said open source software
| would be on a level playing field with proprietary software such as Windows.
`----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7910110.stm
Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: UK Government Policy
,----[ Quote ]
| The UK Government has made it clear that Open Source and Open Standards, with
| a focus on re-use of software development and deployment, is to clearly and
| unequivocably be part of the decision-making for UK Government I.T.
| procurement and contracting. Also part of the policy is a clear committment
| to engage with the Free Software community and to actively encourage the
| development of "Government-Class" Free Software products.
`----
http://www.advogato.org/article/1002.html
Is the UK going open source?
,----[ Quote ]
| The new UK initiative however is not a wholesale rip and replace of the
| proprietary tools it already uses. It does not restrict the use of
| proprietary software either, but rather 'supports' open standards over closed
| proprietary lock-in.
`----
http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/02/is-the-uk-going-open-source.html
UK Government Endorses Open Source and ODF
,----[ Quote ]
| Late today (UK time), the British Government issued a bold new strategy for
| use of open source software - and open standards - in Great Britain. In Open
| Source, Open Standards and Re-Use, the government's Minister for Digital
| Engagement (yes, really, and he's on Twitter too) significantly revised the
| brave but toothless policy of 2004 "that it should seek to use Open Source
| where it gave the best value for money to the taxpayer in delivering public
| services". This is fantastic news - the digital tipping point is at hand.
| (The publication is also progressive in having nominated use of the
| tag "#ukgovOSS" in comment and coverage so it can be found and aggregated).
`----
http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/uk_government_endorses_open_source
Government publishes open-source strategy
http://www.vnunet.com/computing/news/2237208/government-publishes-open
Government publishes open-source strategy
,----[ Quote ]
| The announcement follows a recent declaration by shadow chancellor George
| Osborne that the Conservative Party favours the greater use of open source
| and would take action to prove a "level playing field".
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/gov_open_source/
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