IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

But despite the problems, the Office of Government Commerce, the watchdog for government spending, is resisting pressure to make the relevant reports public. Perhaps the reports make such ugly reading that the British public would be too upset by the gross wasting of public money.

The Public Accounts Committee wants the reports published and all projects to go through all stages of Gateway Review, unless the OGC agrees they can skip them. The committee believes the Treasury should have the power to withold funding for projects which "consistently ignore stages of the Gateway process."

The National Computing Centre (NCC) has set up an open source laboratory to test the viability of the technology for public sector organisations, it has announced.

The laboratory is part of the Open Source Academy, funded by Whitehall under its e-innovations programme. NCC is running the academy in a consortium which includes four councils and local IT body Socitm. The aim is to help public sector bodies evaluate open source alternatives to proprietary solutions in an "independent test environment", according to an NCC statement issued on 17 June 2005.

Open source software in schools can offer a "cost effective" alternative to proprietary IT but needs "careful planning and support", according to a report by the government's education IT body.

The pilots were run in partnership with a number of government bodies earlier this year and sought to assess the viability of using Open Source Software across central government departments and the wider public sector.

The project report from the study "Open Source Software in Schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs" demonstrates that although the implementation of OSS in schools needs careful planning and support, the use of OSS can offer a cost-effective alternative to proprietary software.

This has to be essential reading for anyone involved in e-Government and public sector IT in the UK.

The public sector has been told it must consider using open source software in the strongest signal yet that the government believes it is a viable alternative.

Open source software is gaining ground in local government and could be the key to overcoming integration issues, say experts.

THE government is seriously considering the use of open-source software in a major Whitehall IT project for the first time.

Open source software is now a viable option for the public sector's desktops, says Whitehall buying arm the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

The agency is publishing its conclusions today following a series of year-long trials of open source technology across a number of public sector organisations.

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC)'s report on year-long open-source software trials in the public sector says the software is maturing rapidly and should be considered alongside rival proprietary tools.

Die Umstellung der Bundestags-Server von Windows NT auf Linux ist vollzogen. Doch so glatt wie die IT-Verantwortlichen es darstellen (wir berichteten), verlief die Migration offenbar nicht, so der Berliner Anbieter für Unternehmenssoftware PSI. So sei es Ende letzten Jahres zu Schwierigkeiten bei der Verbindung von Windows-PCs mit Linux-basierten Servern gekommen, gab das Unternehmen heute in Berlin preis. Nachdem die Neukonfiguration fehlschlug, blieb nach den Angaben der Projektleitung der Bundestagsverwaltung nichts anderes übrig, als die Server vorübergehend wieder auf Windows zurückzusetzen.