LONDON - Shadow chancellor George Osbourne has estimated that the UK government could save in excess of £600 million a year if more open source software was deployed across various departments. He added that the need of the hour was a "culture change" as open source software could cut the IT bill by as much as 5 percent every year.
"The problem is that the cultural change has not taken place in government," he said in a speech to the Royal Society of Arts yesterday. Mr Osbourne added that the government had chosen to neglect a 2004 report that said savings would be significant if open source software was used widely.
"All too often a government IT system is incompatible with other types of software, which stifles competition and hampers innovation," Mr Osbourne pointed out. "Looking at the litany of IT projects that have collapsed or spiraled over budget, it's clear too that this has meant billions of pounds wasted and public service reform being hampered."
In his speech he also referred to many countries that have successfully turned to open source, in the process almost halving their IT bills. Japan was a noteworthy example, he added. The Japanese government has shifted its entire payroll system to open source and have reduced costs significantly.
“The Spanish region of Extremadura migrated 70,000 desktops and 400 servers in its schools to open source software. It has calculated that this decision has already saved them over £10m," he said, adding that in the UK some public departments had already demonstrated the efficacy of such a shift.
