[Fsfe-uk] Government and IT

[Nick Hockings]

The Economist magazine (Government and IT, 4th May 2002) reports that not only 
is government the largest buyer of IT, it gets exrordinaril poor value for 
money. The inland revenue had a &1.4 Bn overrun from a single contractor. (Yes 
10^9 not 10^6.)

(NB These were all-inclusive hardware, software, implementation and maintenance 
contracts.)

The MPs who spend our money on this also write the legislation that may 
threaten free software. They should have some interest in value for money, and 
their (our?) liberty.

1) Are any companies bidding for government contracts with free software based 
solutions?

2) Are we making arguments to MPs based on the financial aspects of liberty?. 
(ie If the solution is free software based you can fire the contractor without 
binning the project.)

3) Are there any examples of better ways for large institutions to implement 
IT? (eg Decentralized, each office looks after its own LAN, and outward 
connections. This might involve free software development methods applied to 
the physical network as well as sharing actual software.)


Nick Hockings

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