A conference to discuss the challenges facing local authorities in choosing software platforms to enable them to deliver e-government programmes and transform service delivery will be held on February 6 at Glaziers Hall, London Bridge, London.

The day-long conference is being staged by London Connects and the Open Source Academy (OSA). The OSA is funded under the Office of the Deputy Prime Mininsters e-Innovations programme and is tasked with providing answers to local authorities on the use of open source software (OSS) and its integration with the omnipresent proprietary systems currently dominant in the sector.

The ODPM wants to see greater competition in the software market, and aims to encourage local authorities to make more use of OSS as it is potentially cheaper and more secure.

A key obstacle to a mixed software economy, and to local authorities looking to make use of OSS, is the undisclosed hidden lock-ins that exist with proprietary software, severely restricting the options that are available. The conference will mark the launch of a certification scheme which will enable councils more easily to understand the implications these lock-ins have on future procurement decisions. Called Certified Open, the scheme will gauge the openness of software and its potential for integration and use with other software systems, which will assist local authority officers when making decisions about software procurement, both proprietary and open source. The conference will also announce the results of all the work-streams being run under Open Source Academy, notably the implementation of Star Office at Bristol CC, and the main stream roll out of OSS at Birmingham CC.

Speakers from local authorities, the ODPM, the European Commission, and European industry will review the issues, share actual experiences and give guidance on effective software procurement, and the continued development of OSS as a viable alternative, and addition, to proprietary software.

[Switching to, and more or less exclusively using, open source software should be a Europe-wide government policy. It brings with it huge advantages: improved local and national security because source code can be understood, certified and modified; a shift upwards in IT competence in the public sector, bringing with it an improved level of education and staff training; huge long-term economic gains as applications become tailored to requirements and standardised across Europe; long-term improvements to the Europe balance of payments (sending billions of pounds to the US each year to pay for low-quality software is worse than stupid) - just to mention a few.

It is important to make people in the public sector understand the benefits of open source software, and also that the transition path to OSS exists and can be travelled. Hopefully this event will bring this goal closer. --Ed].

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.opensourceacademy.org.uk
www.londonconnects.gov.uk
www.promarta.co.uk/winter

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