British Government Going Open Source For IT Procurement

[Zaune]

The Guardian

Ministers are looking at saving tens of millions of pounds a year by abandoning expensive software produced by firms such as Microsoft.

Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's Office suite alone since 2010.

But the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude believes a significant proportion of that outlay could be cut by switching to software which can produce open-source files in the "open document format" (ODF), such as OpenOffice and Google Docs.

Document formats are set to be standardised across Whitehall to help break the "oligopoly" of IT suppliers, and improve communications between civil servants.

The proposal is part of the coalition's drive to make its procurement more effective and efficient.

Speaking at a cross-government event showcasing new online services on Wednesday, Maude will say: "The software we use in government is still supplied by just a few large companies. A tiny oligopoly dominates the marketplace.

"I want to see a greater range of software used, so civil servants have access to the information they need and can get their work done without having to buy a particular brand of software.

"In the first instance, this will help departments to do something as simple as share documents with each other more easily. But it will also make it easier for the public to use and share government information.

"So we have been talking to users about the problems they face when they read or work with our documents – and we have been inviting ideas from experts on how to solve these challenges."

Maude will add: "Technical standards for document formats may not sound like the first shot in a revolution.

"But be in no doubt: the adoption of compulsory standards in government threatens to break open Whitehall's lock-in to proprietary formats. In turn we will open the door for a host of other software providers."

Maude will also hail changes designed to increase the number of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) winning public sector contracts.

He will highlight the creation of CloudStore – an online marketplace for councils and other public bodies to buy software. Up to £10m a month is being spent on the site, with more than half going to SMEs.

Saying the proportion of central government procurement from SMEs has risen from 6% in 2010 to more than 10% now, Maude will add: "We know the best technology and digital ideas often come from small businesses but too often in the past they were excluded from government work.

"In the civil service there was a sense that if you hired a big multi-national, who everyone knew the name of, you'd never be fired.

"We weren't just missing out on innovation, we were paying top dollar for yesterday's technology.

"One great example of the potential from small businesses was when we re-tendered a hosting contract.

"The incumbent big supplier bid £4m; a UK-based small business offered to do it for £60,000.

"We saved taxpayers a whopping 98.5%. I don't think we can make savings of that scale everywhere but hard-working people expect us to try as hard as we possibly can."

Now that is how you reduce the deficit!

[Borgholio]

"We saved taxpayers a whopping 98.5%."

Yeah, fuck Microsoft.

[Block]

Aren't there going to be security concerns? One of the reasons the Army tends to be a couple years behind as far as the newest tech goes is that they spend years and millions of dollars making sure it's as secure as possible.

[LaCroix]

Aren't there going to be security concerns? One of the reasons the Army tends to be a couple years behind as far as the newest tech goes is that they spend years and millions of dollars making sure it's as secure as possible.

Why would a Microsof Word file be any safer than a Star office file? They're talking about switching the text editor (actually the whole office suite)...

[Mr Bean]

Aren't there going to be security concerns? One of the reasons the Army tends to be a couple years behind as far as the newest tech goes is that they spend years and millions of dollars making sure it's as secure as possible.

Using open office instead of Microsoft is not going to impact security except in email. Military computers tend to be locked down enough as it is that it's not the office software where they get attacked. Since 99% of the stuff is custom and closed written.

[Block]

Aren't there going to be security concerns? One of the reasons the Army tends to be a couple years behind as far as the newest tech goes is that they spend years and millions of dollars making sure it's as secure as possible.

Using open office instead of Microsoft is not going to impact security except in email. Military computers tend to be locked down enough as it is that it's not the office software where they get attacked. Since 99% of the stuff is custom and closed written.

Yeah, but if they switch to Google docs for instance, and by they I mean any government department, doesn't that make their internal documents vulnerable since it's stored on Google's servers?

[Zaune]

Oh, yeah. Let's take another look at the second line, shall we? I wanted to bold it after a second, more thorough reading of the article but missed the edit window.

Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's Office suite alone since 2010.

Two hundred million pounds. That's about a third of a billion US dollars. On Microsoft Office licenses.

I don't normally do this sort of thing in N&P, but this is a much better and more accurate depiction of my current state of mind than I could ever hope to achieve with prose:

[img]********http://31.media.tumblr.com/a09328f63ea3 ... o2_500.gif[/img]

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, that's for a three year period. And I'm quite sure that in absolute terms, having an office software suite is worth much more than $100 million (or £60 million) to Her Majesty's Government a year. They are getting something worth more than they are paying for it.

The problem is that they could have the same thing for much less money.

But to adopt that cheaper system, they have to accept other problems- for example, anyone who doesn't have the appropriate open source software won't be able to read their files. Since Microsoft Office is (more than a bit unfortunately) the standard in the business world, and OpenOffice isn't, that presents an opportunity cost.

Documents written in OpenOffice may not always be readable to people who can read a .doc or .xls file. Most of the Government's half million employees will need at least brief retraining for OpenOffice, or failing that will have to spend a few hours of time on the job scratching their heads and figuring out features of an unfamiliar program. The government may need to keep on staff one or more programmers dedicated to tweaking OpenOffice to be more responsive to the Government's needs- whereas Microsoft might well be able to detach someone to do exactly that from their own in-house resources, given a customer worth $60 million a year.

Is the cost in wasted man-hours and missed opportunities due to those problems cheaper to the Government than the costs of keeping up Microsoft Office? Quite possibly- but it isn't a trivially easy question to answer.

[Zaune]

Do not post huge gifs or you shall suffer racks, gibbets, sword and fire

Sorry, sorry! I really should stop embedding images when I'm viewing this site on a nine-inch screen...

[Edi]

But to adopt that cheaper system, they have to accept other problems- for example, anyone who doesn't have the appropriate open source software won't be able to read their files. Since Microsoft Office is (more than a bit unfortunately) the standard in the business world, and OpenOffice isn't, that presents an opportunity cost.

Documents written in OpenOffice may not always be readable to people who can read a .doc or .xls file.

Yes, there is an opportunity cost, but it is not Open Document files being unreadable by MS Office. The more recent MS Office versions (e.g. 2010) read them just fine for the most part. WRT text documents Open Office or Libre Office documents can be directly exported to PDF which removes any readability issues.

The problem is reading Microsoft XML documents in Open Office though for basic documents without fancy bells and whistles, it is for the most part not a problem.

Most of the Government's half million employees will need at least brief retraining for OpenOffice, or failing that will have to spend a few hours of time on the job scratching their heads and figuring out features of an unfamiliar program.

Generally the amount of training to use word processor or spreadsheet programs for any given worker even in a fairly large organization is NIL. Positions where advanced knowledge is required get vetted beforehand, so that the people in them generally have the skills required, or they get training most drones get to sink or swim. The actual features of the programs are more or less identical, only some of them are located in a slightly different place.

The government may need to keep on staff one or more programmers dedicated to tweaking OpenOffice to be more responsive to the Government's needs- whereas Microsoft might well be able to detach someone to do exactly that from their own in-house resources, given a customer worth $60 million a year.

Having a dedicated team doing that will in the long run cost a whole lot less than having MS do it because they would be paying MS separately for each and every customization change AND they would have no transparency or visibility into how it is done and as soon as the software changes to a new version, that needs to be redone. With an open source framework in place they can make sure their own teams knows everything and documents everything about their software AND they can make sure it is programmed to be easily updated to be compatible with newer versions.

Is the cost in wasted man-hours and missed opportunities due to those problems cheaper to the Government than the costs of keeping up Microsoft Office? Quite possibly- but it isn't a trivially easy question to answer.

Many signs point to inertia, coupled with unwillingness to shell out extortionate upgrade costs every couple of years being the single biggest reason for why ancient and frankly obsolete software is kept around for years on end (though compatibility issues related to kludgy, ancient legacy programs is another big factor). There are always significant costs to upgrading things, especially if the things you are using are essentially a black box that you need the manufacturer to tweak or consult with every time anything changes just to make sure something doesn't break.

A big switch like the one discussed can be made and it WILL have opportunity costs in the short term, but the benefits come from doing things with a longer view in place. Of course it's going to hurt some and there is going to be resistance to change, but your post is mainly fear mongering about how impossible such a change is. It is not but it does need to be carefully planned.

[LaCroix]

What Edi said, with one addition.

The propblem with 'other' people maybe (very unlikely) being unable to read document is NIL, due to the fact that everyone who might receive the electronic version of that document will be a collegue sitting a few feet from the sender. Government offices do have the habit of communication exclusively on paper, not only with "customers", but even between branches, in order to create a traceable paper trail.

[mr friendly guy]

IIRC some countries like France and China already use open source programs for government agencies.

[Thanas]

IIRC some countries like France and China already use open source programs for government agencies.

Germany has used open source since over 7 years IIRC. Not for all, but plenty of departments do.

Including a lot of security-sensitive departments because they can rewrite the software as they want.

[Zaune]

In fact, personal experience here? I have been sent documents by email from a government office on occasion (well, a not-for-profit quango subcontracted by the government, but close enough), and they couldn't have had any less trouble if they'd been using OpenDocument format; they were all in .docx. How many unemployed people or pensioners do you think have anything that can open those? If they do then chances are it's a freeware program like OpenOffice or Google Docs anyway.

[mr friendly guy]

Documents written in OpenOffice may not always be readable to people who can read a .doc or .xls file. Most of the Government's half million employees will need at least brief retraining for OpenOffice, or failing that will have to spend a few hours of time on the job scratching their heads and figuring out features of an unfamiliar program. The government may need to keep on staff one or more programmers dedicated to tweaking OpenOffice to be more responsive to the Government's needs- whereas Microsoft might well be able to detach someone to do exactly that from their own in-house resources, given a customer worth $60 million a year.

I have Microsoft office on my desktop but tried open office software on my laptop. Generally if you can use MS word, you should use open office quite easily as the format is very similar. Moreover if you are worried about the inability to read ODF files, just save file as a DOC or DOCX file instead and people who use MS office should be able to read it.

[Simon_Jester]

Most of the Government's half million employees will need at least brief retraining for OpenOffice, or failing that will have to spend a few hours of time on the job scratching their heads and figuring out features of an unfamiliar program.

Generally the amount of training to use word processor or spreadsheet programs for any given worker even in a fairly large organization is NIL. Positions where advanced knowledge is required get vetted beforehand, so that the people in them generally have the skills required, or they get training most drones get to sink or swim. The actual features of the programs are more or less identical, only some of them are located in a slightly different place.

The dollar cost is nil. The practical cost of having, say, a hundred thousand workers spend a total of half an hour each screwing around trying to figure out things they used to do?

Wasting 30 minutes of employee time for that many people can be reasonably interpreted as an opportunity cost equivalent to whatever you'd have to pay for tens of thousands of man-hours of work. It's not necessarily a show-stopper, but it's not entirely irrelevant to the question "is this worth the money we save?"

Of course, no doubt there are other similar employee-fiddling costs associated with Microsoft Office.

A big switch like the one discussed can be made and it WILL have opportunity costs in the short term, but the benefits come from doing things with a longer view in place. Of course it's going to hurt some and there is going to be resistance to change, but your post is mainly fear mongering about how impossible such a change is. It is not but it does need to be carefully planned.

I think you're misreading my tone. Allow me to explain:

I figure that going to OpenOffice is probably a good idea, but I figure it's at least worth stopping to think about why various organizations (like the British government) don't automatically do this immediately and put Office out of business. "Because they are stupid" may not be the only reason.

I like OpenOffice quite well, and indeed use it regularly, but I'm not going to walk around assuming everyone is dumb and irresponsible for not having switched to it. And that's the sort of thing I like to explore- why is it that roughly normal people make decisions that seem so suboptimal? Are they merely incompetent? Or is there something going on that isn't immediately obvious?

[LaCroix]

I figure that going to OpenOffice is probably a good idea, but I figure it's at least worth stopping to think about why various organizations (like the British government) don't automatically do this immediately and put Office out of business. "Because they are stupid" may not be the only reason.

In case of my company (huge multinational, with in-house it developing everything they want) - innertia. People in charge are used to the need to buy their software somewhere, and having licenses for each user. If you don't have them, you will be sued and fined steeply. We even had 'inspectors' from Microsoft counting workstations in our offices at one time.

The idea that software is cheap, and no licence (in the usual sense) needed frightens the hell out of these people.

Our department had to make a couple of demo projects and lot's of cost projections, etc. before they finally saw the light and allowed us to switch from Mainframe to a Linux-based cluster Server for our databases.

[PainRack]

I can't WAIT till they finally convert to Open office, or at least, a version of MS office which doesn't drastically impact Open Office here at work.


As it is, I have to pay a penalty of reworking my powerpoints at work when I have to do a presentation just because MS office routinely re-arranges the look when I convert it. As someone without any IT training outside of school, I can honestly say that the switch from MS office to Open office was simple enough, especially since I'm not using any fancy wells and whistles. Hell, its no different than when upgrading from MS 2000 to 2008.

The only thing I haven't played with is with using Excel stats formula on Open Office. Shrugs. The only time I played with said formula was to help my boss twice with the office roster anyway. That and when I got bored and used them for my NC research project, instead pf everyone else using SPSS and then importing it into the graphs.

[Irbis]

Ministers are looking at saving tens of millions of pounds a year by abandoning expensive software produced by firms such as Microsoft.

Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's Office suite alone since 2010.

Gee, maybe instead of knee-jerk abandonment they should have looked at these contracts more closely. Office costs less than £200, but even at £200 pound it means they got what, a million copies? More than there is computers in all government offices in UK? That without considering the fact someone ordering a million licences will get a huge reduction on a silver platter. Doesn't someone smell fishy here?

The thing is, from my experience, this sounds like that £200 million contract is really 60 million (yearly), and it doesn't have to be that much. If UK gets 24/7 support (which is the big part of software contracts, not software itself) of all these copies of Office, including someone willing to drive and fix any issue, it's bargain, really.

Speaking at a cross-government event showcasing new online services on Wednesday, Maude will say: "The software we use in government is still supplied by just a few large companies. A tiny oligopoly dominates the marketplace.

"I want to see a greater range of software used, so civil servants have access to the information they need and can get their work done without having to buy a particular brand of software.

This is pure nonsense. Had someone said "a tiny oligopoly dominates the marketplace" of say, British electricity plugs, right-side cars, or other British half dead "standards" fossilize market and decrease competition (which is actually true) the very same ministers would find 400 excuses why they should be kept.

However, the above is entirely different - they already have optimized, all-compatible infrastructure, and they seek to fragment it. It would be like every country in EU tried to establish their own national plug (worse, in fact, at least making converter for plug is simple and reliable).

I remember glorious 90s and their total lack of standards, including warring office suites, and it's hard to find admins looking back fondly on these. Trying to find out what the hell reads properly your documents, pictures, or hell, pure text files wasn't fun.

"One great example of the potential from small businesses was when we re-tendered a hosting contract.

"The incumbent big supplier bid £4m; a UK-based small business offered to do it for £60,000.

I'd also look at this contract, as it smells of pork, unless big supplier offered guaranteed 24/7 hosting with full support, and the 'small businesses' offered typical crap cheap hosting. There is actually very funny story about courthouse in Poland being forced to use fish store as post office in similar inane drive to find "savings" that so far looks like will end up in tears and wasted money, so colour me sceptical of equality of these offers.

That is not to say we should keep Office. The relevant software should be European standard, made by EU company. There is no reason why we should transfer money to USA for that yearly - but it should be solid standard and company capable of providing good support. Paying tiny companies for half-assed implementations of OO is bad way to create the above, IMHO.

[salm]

IIRC some countries like France and China already use open source programs for government agencies.

Germany has used open source since over 7 years IIRC. Not for all, but plenty of departments do.

Including a lot of security-sensitive departments because they can rewrite the software as they want.

Some public institutions have migrated to open source software very successfully like the city of Munich for example. Others (Freiburg or the foreign office for example) had trouble, in some cases enormous trouble and migrated or are migrating back to MS products.
It takes many years to completely migrate (10 years in case of Munich) and even then you´re not sure to succeed. I´m not saying that it shouldn´t be done, actually I really support it, but people have to know that it´s a pretty difficult and long process.

Maybe a better approach than the German one would be centralized approach where all governmental institutions of a nation switch at the same time in order to reduce compatibility problems, which to my understanding cause a large percentage of the problems.

[madd0ct0r]

Speaking at a cross-government event showcasing new online services on Wednesday, Maude will say: "The software we use in government is still supplied by just a few large companies. A tiny oligopoly dominates the marketplace.

"I want to see a greater range of software used, so civil servants have access to the information they need and can get their work done without having to buy a particular brand of software.

This is pure nonsense. Had someone said "a tiny oligopoly dominates the marketplace" of say, British electricity plugs, right-side cars, or other British half dead "standards" fossilize market and decrease competition (which is actually true) the very same ministers would find 400 excuses why they should be kept.

Ugh - Irbis - there's a huge difference between there being a national standard for plug design and only using bought from one large company. Open Office opens microsoft docs, Microsoft opens open office docs and both can save as pdf. It's a standard file format, not a company special.


I have found some differences between Excel and OOSpreadsheet - the former's pivot tables are a bit more powerful/intutive, the latter's N function and handling of date/time stamps is much better. I'm happy working in both and will switch depending on my needs.

[phongn]

I can't WAIT till they finally convert to Open office, or at least, a version of MS office which doesn't drastically impact Open Office here at work.

You will never, ever get 100% compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice. It's not intentional sabotage on Microsoft's part (they stopped playing those games) but that office formats are complicated and converting to internal structures is fraught with peril and error. Microsoft sometimes has trouble doing it between Macintosh and Windows Office - two formats they deeply understand - much less some third-party format.

If it is absolutely important that your OpenOffice presentations display correctly, bring along an official viewer program, your own laptop or export to PDF. Don't import into Microsoft Office and pray for success (or alternatively, waste time opening it and fixing the import mistakes).

The thing is, from my experience, this sounds like that £200 million contract is really 60 million (yearly), and it doesn't have to be that much. If UK gets 24/7 support (which is the big part of software contracts, not software itself) of all these copies of Office, including someone willing to drive and fix any issue, it's bargain, really.

They almost certainly are getting support. The cost might also include year Exchange licenses, which can add up quick.

I'd also look at this contract, as it smells of pork, unless big supplier offered guaranteed 24/7 hosting with full support, and the 'small businesses' offered typical crap cheap hosting. There is actually very funny story about courthouse in Poland being forced to use fish store as post office in similar inane drive to find "savings" that so far looks like will end up in tears and wasted money, so colour me sceptical of equality of these offers.

Most of the big government-friendly providers in the US charge heinous prices (Verizon, HP, etc.) so I wouldn't be surprised; but the small firm might not have the same SLA. There's always the option of hosting everything on EC2, of course.

That is not to say we should keep Office. The relevant software should be European standard, made by EU company. There is no reason why we should transfer money to USA for that yearly - but it should be solid standard and company capable of providing good support. Paying tiny companies for half-assed implementations of OO is bad way to create the above, IMHO.

Good luck.

Some public institutions have migrated to open source software very successfully like the city of Munich for example. Others (Freiburg or the foreign office for example) had trouble, in some cases enormous trouble and migrated or are migrating back to MS products. It takes many years to completely migrate (10 years in case of Munich) and even then you´re not sure to succeed. I´m not saying that it shouldn´t be done, actually I really support it, but people have to know that it´s a pretty difficult and long process.

IIRC, Munich didn't save much money in the end, but they liked being free of Microsoft.

Maybe a better approach than the German one would be centralized approach where all governmental institutions of a nation switch at the same time in order to reduce compatibility problems, which to my understanding cause a large percentage of the problems.

What about legacy documents?

[salm]

IIRC, Munich didn't save much money in the end, but they liked being free of Microsoft.

I´m not sure. Wikipedia claims that they saved 25% or 11 Million Euro in 2012. And that was when the migration wasn´t fully completed.

What about legacy documents?

I guess you have to convert them and archive them somehow. When I said "all at the same time" I didn´t mean an instant switch but a slow switch over 10 or so years. Just that it wouldn´t be a single city but the whole nation.

[Crazy_Vasey]

I'd be more worried about Excel files than Word documents. You can fix formatting glitches and what-not as they crop up in documents, but I'm not sure there's really a good drop-in replacement for Excel. People do all sorts of crazy complicated things in Excel that they probably shouldn't and trying to convert that stuff to something that'll work right in LibreOffice or whatever sounds like a massive pain in the arse.

[LaCroix]

Guy, aren't you forgetting something? This is government - archives will be mostly helt in "paper in shelves" format.