Current policies

From OpenEGov

Government policy is supposed to be within the framework of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan (written in 2002). This is not a particularly specific document and detailed UK government policy is being elaborated - in the context of much, largely unresisted, pressure from proprietary software companies - in a series of official policy documents. The first of these came out in 2002; the current version in October 2004. It appears that the policies of the Microsoft-funded Institute for Software Choice are being implemented stage by stage, and that opposition from free software organisations has not so far been strong enough to successfully oppose this. In spite of this the policy does leave room for state organisations to experiment with the use of free software and certainly does not close down all the options.

The broad features of the original government policy(2002) are discussed in the Government OSS policy page, and there is a commentary on the revised document (version 2) which was sent to the Cabinet Office, together with their reply, before the final release of the current policy document. The Institute for Software Choice issued a document praising the new policy.

In 2003, a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General on Purchasing and Managing Software Licences (HC 579) was discussed in front of the Committee of Public Accounts. The evidence included a long discussion of the problems involved with buying from a single supplier contrasted with use of free software.

Further documents relating to national policy can be found on the OGC site.