[Fsfe-uk] gov desktop

[Tom Coady]

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT:

- BATTLE FOR THE CIVIL SERVANT'S DESKTOP CONTINUES...

The Government is re-negotiating its landmark agreement with Microsoft offering 
departments preferential terms on the company's software products - although 
low take-up is threatening to curtail the potential savings to the public 
sector.

Giving evidence to the Common's Public Accounts Committee, Peter Gershon, Outgoing Chief Executive of the 
Office of Government Commerce (OGC), said the Government was re-opening discussions with the software giant 
to seek "further improvements" in the licensing arrangement it secured in February 2002. The motive 
is to help OGC towards achieving the savings target projected under the agreement, stated then as £100 
million over three years. Currently, it is halfway there, but several very large players - the Inland 
Revenue, Department for Work and Pensions, and much of the NHS - have yet to decide whether to come on board, 
preventing all public sector users from benefiting from the increased discounts on offer as more departments 
sign up. "Some departments have not seen a compelling case to move yet", said Mr Gershon. "We 
did anticipate at the time... there would be a bigger surge earlier than we actually saw in practice". 
In early 2004 the OGC will also be looking to convince!
the Ministry of Defence, which has its own licensing terms with Microsoft, to 
sign up to the agreement.

Questioned on the apparent lack of progress on implementing the Government's open source software (OSS) policy 
announced back in July 2002, Hugh Barrett, Chief Executive of OGC's purchasing arm OGCbuying.solutions, told the 
Committee that the Government had not said "things would change overnight".  Mr Barrett said that in 2002, 
the software industry's view was that OSS was "not fit for purpose" on desktops and to recommend its use 
would have been "frankly... irresponsible".  Government was now "laying down the policy in advance of 
the maturity of the technology", he added.