OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN THE DESKTOP: THE

PERSPECTIVE OF THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS IN UK

Andres Baravalle, Sarah Chambers, Siobhan North, Mike Holcombe

Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.

Keywords: Open Source Software, Open Data Standards, Public Administrations, United Kingdom.

Abstract: Open Source could potentially play an important role in e-Government. The COSPA project has been

investigating the possibilities of using Open Source in the desktops in Public Administrations in Europe.

During this two year project, the attitudes towards Open Source appeared to have differed in the UK

compared to similar organisations within some other countries in Europe. In this paper we investigate and

discuss possible causes of this.

1 INTRODUCTION

This paper is based on research undertaken during

the COSPA project, “A Consortium for studying,

evaluating and supporting the introduction of Open

Source Software and open data standards in the

Public Administration”. The project, funded by the

European Union's Sixth Framework Programme,

includes 15 main partners from Academia, Industry

and public administrations across Europe.

The aim of the consortium is to identify, analyse

and provide support in dealing with issues arising

from introducing Open Source software and open

data standards for personal productivity and

document management in European public

administrations. The issues being considered include

the cost of data migration, interoperability and

integration with existing solutions, personnel

training, support and maintenance.

Even initially it was clear that not all the partner

public administrations had the same commitment to

carrying out the experiment planned to investigate

the potential use of Open Source. Within the project

some public administrations have been making

progress with trial transitions to Open Source, while

the progress of other public administrations has been

slow, or has almost stopped, as in the UK.

It was essential for the project that experimental

sites were available where a number of desktops

could be migrated, first to the use of Open Source

software within the operating system they were

already using and then, in a second phase by

replacing the operating system as well. In the UK

there were major problems in finding suitable

experimental sites for the project, whereas this was

not the case for the other partners countries within

the project.

SOCTIM, a professional association for

information and communication technology

managers in the UK public sector, was in charge of

providing experimentation sites in the UK.

Economical incentives for the participating public

administrations were available, and a call for

participation was publicised, but none of the

proposed projects were deemed acceptable.

As a consequently, the project had to be

restructured, and an interesting question arose: why

is it so hard to introduce Open Source on the

desktops of UK public administrations, compared

with the public administrations in other European

countries?

A variety of issues affect the decision of

adopting Open Source in the desktop (Kovaks et al.

2004). The following sections focus on the UK

experience and we will propose answers to our

question.

2 OPEN SOURCE AND THE

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

The Open Source movement (Perence 1999) is an

offshoot of the Free Software movement (Stallman,

n.a.) and advocates the freedom to use, modify and

redistribute software, on both pragmatic and

philosophical grounds. As the two movements share

many points of contact, Open Source and Free

Baravalle A., Chambers S., North S. and Holcombe M. (2006).

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN THE DESKTOP: THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS IN UK.

In Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and

e-Government / e-Learning, pages 39-44

DOI: 10.5220/0001247600390044

 SciTePress

Software are often commonly referred as FLOSS

(Free/Libre and Open Source Software) (Ghosh

2002). In this paper we are using the term Open

Source on the grounds that it is more inclusive than

Free Software and is more widely understood in the

target community.

Open Source is a property of the software related

to the licensing policy; practically software is

considered Open Source if it is using any licence

that has been approved by the Open Source Initiative

(www.opensource.org). Linux, the Mozilla-based

applications and OpenOffice.org are some examples

of successful Open Source products used in the

desktop.

Proprietary software is, on the other hand,

software which does not provide all the liberties of

Open Source. For example, the user may have the

freedom to use and redistribute the software, but not

to change it; this is the case in some royalty-free

binaries such as in freeware or in shareware.

Some organisations involved in Open Source

development base their business on selling services

(as Novel, Sun and RedHat do). Some Linux

distributions are a customisation of existing

software, with additional software for facilitating

system configuration. Whereas, some companies,

such as MySQL AB, do business by selling non-

Open Source versions of their Open Source

products.

For public administrations, using Open Source

can be an interesting from many different points of

view, and e-government is one of the more obvious

ones. Firstly, Open Source increases the

inclusiveness of electronic communication. Much

Open Source software is distributed free of charge;

thus a public administration using Open Source does

not force their citizens to purchase software in order

to communicate using it. To communicate with

public administrations that use proprietary software

it can be necessary to have the software itself.

Promotion and support of Open Source has an

impact not just on the public administration itself.

It may affect the local economy and the vitality of

local businesses, as public administration will

require, in many cases, support for the

implementation of Open Source and for technical

support.

Moreover, Open Source naturally provides the

roots for cooperation, which can be a key factor for

transforming services. Public administrations which

acquire their software in the free market and adapt it

to their needs are equally free to pass it on to other

public administrations. Thus Open Source can be

strategic for lowering the cost of acquisition, as

solutions developed by or for other public

administrations can simply be adopted. Reusing and

improving software can have a high impact on both

the quality and variety of new digitally-based

services provided.

Finally, it is important to mention that a current

priority of public administrations in UK is e-

government: it was the target that all public services

should be available online by the end of 2005

(Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2004), with the

opportunity to apply for extra funding to work

towards this goal. If e-government is, and has been,

the main priority, migration to Open Source can be a

key factor for the implementation of this strategy.

Nevertheless, in the UK, Open Source is not

having the same degree of success as elsewhere in

Europe. Organisations requiring new software have

different levels of interest in Open Source. In some

cases, Open Source is not seen as an asset, or is seen

as irrelevant. The main concerns for this type of

organisations are related to functions (the software

must meet their requirements), stability (the software

must work as expected), security (the software must

not harm the behaviour of the system where it is

installed), documentation (reference material on how

to use the software), support (help to solve any

problems that arise when trying to use the software)

and economy (the software must be as cheap as

possible). Still, even considering Open Source only

from the point of view of its suitability to solve the

key needs of the public administration, many mature

Open Source software products could compete with

and overtake the corresponding proprietary

implementations and yet are not widely adopted in

the UK.

3 DISCUSSION

The evidence for the causes for the UK anomalous

position comes from a variety of sources,

including:personnel of European public

administrations; European companies working with

public administrations; meetings; conversations;

informal interviews; personal mail messages;

discussion in mailing-lists; press and academic

articles.

The subsequent sections will address the main

issues which may have influenced the limited

success of Open Source within the UK public

administrations.

3.1 Technical Considerations

3.1.1 Lack of Success Cases in the UK

When the COSPA project was searching for

experimentation sites in April 2004, there was

limited information about the use of Open Source on

WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT

desktops within UK public administrations, and a

number of articles were not favourable to Open

Source (Lettice 2003 and Computer Weekly 2004).

Although these articles were not based on

experience trials (as there had not been many

experience trials in European public administrations

before the launch of COSPA), they are likely to have

influenced their readers. Press articles are often an

important source of information for managers.

In October 2004, the eagerly awaited report on

the UK Government Open Source Software Trials

from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)

(OGC 2004) was published. One of the key

conclusions was that “Open Source software is a

viable and credible alternative to proprietary

software for infrastructure implementation, and for

meeting the requirements of the majority of desktop

users”. However, it also stated that “Open Source

desktop products (including desktop platforms such

as Linux, and 'office' personal productivity suites)

are developing but there still has been little

significant widespread implementation, though these

are currently starting to be rolled out in public sector

bodies in other European countries.”

Within the report it was stated that “several of

the case studies had migrated or were in the course

of migrating, their desktops to the StarOffice

desktop personal productivity suite or, less

commonly, the OpenOffice suite.”. The report

acknowledges that StarOffice is not Open Source but

states it has been included because it has been

developed from OpenOffice.org, and its

development is being carried out using Open Source

methods. The deployment of OpenOffice.org was

not referred to explicitly in the UK trials and the

references to it in the report are to the Munich case

study (IDABCa 2004). It may be that if StarOffice

were not included in the trial there would have been

insufficient data to study.

Case studies are perceived as important and an

IT manager of a UK council was quoted (Clark

2003) saying “We need other councils that are using

Open Source to show the benefits and [demonstrate]

that it can integrate with existing systems.”

However, just because examples are given of the

planned or successful deployment of Open Source in

other parts of Europe, e.g. France (Mohamed 2003;

Sayer 2005) and Germany (IDABCa 2004; Blau

2005), it does not necessarily imply that UK public

administrations will think it will be applicable to

them.

According to Saran (2004), a survey was

undertaken by the Parliamentary IT group (Eurim)

who questioned government departments on their

use of Open Source. Less than one percent of

Whitehall uses Open Source. Within the same article

the Department of Health is reported as saying it was

not using Open Source on any of its implemented or

planned IT systems.

A more successful case involved the Department

for Education and Skills who funded a study

exploring the contributions that Open Source

software can make to the education sector. The

research was undertaken by Becta (British

Educational Communications and Technology

Agency) and a case study report was published

(Becta 2005). The study investigated the possible

use of Open Source for the operating systems and

office suite within four primary and four secondary

schools. The main consideration for investigating

Open Source options was the potential cost saving,

with seven of the schools reporting savings which

allowed them to buy more hardware and support.

Problems encountered included curriculum software

that was incompatible, interoperability issues, lack

of familiarity and resistance to change.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

recently funded an Open Source Academy project

(Knowledge Asset Management 2005). As part of it

a number of councils have been given grants to

investigate the use of Open Source software on

servers and desktops but no results are available yet.

Open Source is already in use on servers in many

public administrations. What is still lacking is

examples of successful experimentations in the

desktop in the UK. Some authors (Waring and

Maddocks 2005) identify a wider sets of Open

Source experimentations in the desktop – but this is

done considering as Open Source software that is

not commonly considered such (StarOffice).

3.1.2 Perplexity on Support

According to SOCTIM, one of the main reason for

the reluctance in considering Open Source is to be

found in the perceived difficulty of obtaining

support. The UK public administrations investigated

acknowledged that they did not often use support for

desktop software, but nevertheless stressed how

important it was for them to know that support was

available. They perceived that it was difficult to find

these competencies in the market.

This result was confirmed by a questionnaire we

circulated to the current suppliers of software to

public administrations in May 2004 (using SOCTIM

software index of 2003 for the list of suppliers):

none of the suppliers who responded was providing

either Open Source, or consultancy on Open Source.

In the most recent SOCITM survey published in

May 2005 (Soctim/FT 2005) almost 50% of the

respondents saw support issues as being the one of

the main drawbacks in using Open Source.

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN THE DESKTOP: THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS IN

3.2 Economical Considerations

3.2.1 Availability of Funds

The public administrations that are part of the

COSPA project report that their budget for IT is

increasing year by year. They underlined that the

costs are increasing year by year as well, but the

budget is sufficient in (almost) all of the partners for

their normal activity.

The availability of sufficient budget is a clear

argument for keeping the status quo for the software

applications that fulfil the public administrations

requirements for their activity.

However, the COSPA public administrations in

Italy expressed the fear that their budget would

shrink in the coming years, and they want to be

prepared. Presently, in response to Gershon (2004),

UK councils now must make 2.5% efficiency saving

per year for the next 3 years, and that might lead to

different evaluations.

3.2.2 Software Piracy

Statistics on software piracy published in 2004 by

Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IDC show

that the estimated piracy level in UK is the 6th

lowest in the world (BSA 2004a and BSA 2004b).

The study gave the figures at 29% piracy rate in

the UK, compared to 37% across the European

Union and an average of 70% in Eastern Europe.

The other countries represented in the COSPA, apart

from Denmark (26% of estimated piracy) all have an

higher estimated piracy rate: 49% for Italy, 42% for

Hungary, 41% for Ireland.

A possible consideration is that public

administrations in countries where piracy is more

widespread are likely to be affected by the problem.

It is possible that the decision in favour of an

experimentation with Open Source might be linked,

in some cases, to the need for action on software

piracy. This view is confirmed by the fact the

COSPA project is having problems in Denmark as

well, while Italy and Ireland are the countries where

more success has been achieved. Furthermore, one

of our European partners explicitly stated that one of

their motivations in migrating to Open Source

software was a change in the law making software

piracy a criminal offence coupled with a suspicion

that not all their software was legal.

3.2.3 A Different Structure of Costs

The Open Source model is based, from the

economical point of view, on a shift from

commodity to service. Decomposing the cost of

software into the cost of the product itself and the

cost of transfer (including installation, training and

support), it can be seen that the latter is more

variable than the former across Europe. An Open

Source solution is characterised by a cost of the

product itself that is or tends towards to zero, and by

a higher cost of transfer, compared to proprietary

software (due to factors including the necessary

customisation, installation and to the level of

expertise required).

The implications is that the outcome of a

comparison between an Open Source and a

proprietary solution is strictly linked to the cost of

labour, and because of that, the comparison may

differ in the UK, compared to the southern and

eastern countries of Europe.

Moreover, the public sector in the UK is thought

to be one of Microsoft’s most important customers

outside the US, accounting for an estimated £200

million of sales a year (Bolger 2004). It is

reasonable to assume that, consequently, the UK

negotiating position with respect to Microsoft is

stronger than other countries.

The widely publicised UK study on the cost of

Open Source in the UK, at Newham Council,

suggested that switching to Open Source would be

68% more expensive for the council, and that a

upgrade to new Microsoft technology would save

£3.2 million over five years. However, the fact that

the study was paid by Microsoft itself and that a

“special” price was conceded to the council (Lettice

2004) may limit the value of the study.

3.3 Socio-Cultural and Political

Considerations

3.3.1 Dealing with Failure

A concept that has occurred repeatedly in our

interviews with different sources is that the positions

of the managers in the UK public administrations are

not as secure as in other parts of Europe. A strong

personal responsibility links the managers with their

decisions, and that makes them easily subjects of

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD). Decisions are

possibly affected by consideration, not only of what

is best for the public administration, but possibly

what is the safer option for the individual decision

maker.

The immediate consequence of this is a lower

propensity for innovation. At the same time, public

administration managers feel that choosing a

reputable company is a way of covering themselves

if something goes wrong. The point of view that was

presented is that they would be better able to justify

their decision if something went wrong with a

WEBIST 2006 - SOCIETY, E-BUSINESS AND E-GOVERNMENT

reputable company or product than if they had

chosen something new or different.

There is a common feeling that “somebody to

sue” is essential, in case something goes wrong.

However, while it is not (usually) possible to sue the

developer of an Open Source, it is possible to have a

service agreement with a provider, including

customisation, support and responsibility clauses so

this belief may be based on a false premise.

3.3.2 Political Considerations

Different political considerations play a role in the

different perceptions of Open Source.

Regarding the political-economical perspective,

liberalism (intended as a political and economical

theory advocating free competition and a self-

regulating market) is a common denominator among

the society in the UK, and a common ideological

background amongst the main political parties.

Political considerations – that cannot be

appreciated with a reference purely to the values of a

free market - are involved in the imperative of

considering freedom before any other aspect. The

position is expressed, among others, by Stallman: “I

will reject [proprietary software] even if it is the best

quality in the world, simply because I value my

freedom too much to give it up for that.” (Biancuzzi

2004). The imperative driving technical decisions in

UK is, instead, efficiency and convenience (Davies

2004), and does not involve evaluations of a political

kind, or at least not to the same degree.

Moreover, we have to consider that important

political forces across (continental) Europe (such as

the PSE and the Greens) support Open Source, while

this is not generally the case for the main UK

political forces. In the COSPA project, there is

commitment from the involved public

administrations both at a technical and at a political

level, thus allowing public administration managers

to feel that there is a common perspective.

Informal political considerations may have as

well facilitated the choice of Open Source in some

countries, where it is linked to the perception that

increased independence from the US is necessary (or

to explicit anti-US feelings). This is not generally

the case in the UK, that has a close relationship and

political connection with the US.

Another important point is that in the Open

Source model there is a shift from acquiring a

product in the global market, to acquiring a service,

very often in the local market. The side effects in the

local market appear to have had a positive

repercussion in the acceptance of Open Source, as

demonstrated by the reports of some partners of the

COSPA project so far (Baravalle et al. 2005). A UK

public administration is likely to buy a product or

service from anywhere, while in other parts of

Europe there is a strong believe that the public

administrations need to relate to the local

community and that local suppliers are often

“informally” preferred.

The UK point of view is often based more on

market metrics than on political choices. For

example, in November 2004 (IDABC 2004b),

Bristol City Council announced that it was to

migrate 5,000 desktops to StarOffice in a bid to save

£1.4 million over a five year period, after they

conducted a successful trial on 600 desktops.

However, again this is not Open Source, and it is

significant that StarOffice was chosen instead of the

OpenOffice.org.

4 CONCLUSIONS

It is not easy to foresee a commitment to Open

Source in the desktops by the UK public

administrations based on the same motivations that

have been accepted in other European countries.

Technical and economical motivations need to be

sufficiently strong for UK public administrations to

consider Open Source to replace software already in

use. Alternatively, the Open Source community

needs to convince the UK society that freedom is

more important than free market – but this may

prove to be a more difficult task.

For Open Source to have a realistic chance of

succeeding in UK, the only viable option relies not

only on demonstrating that it is more suitable than

proprietary software from a technical and

economical point of view, but on effective

dissemination of the results among the public

administrations.

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