Local government, Central government, Restrictions, Procurement
Digital Britain Minister Tweets Against Tory Tech Manifesto
Yesterday, eWEEK Europe also reported that the vast majority of local government IT officials would be concerned if central government imposed restrictions on IT procurement across all tiers of government. [...] The transparency theme extended to publishing online every item of central government and Quango spending over £25,000, alongside the details of senior civil servants' and local council officials' salaries. This would create a level playing field for open source IT in government procurement and open up government IT contracts to small-to-midsized enterprises (SMEs) by breaking up large IT projects into smaller components. [...] The manifesto also called for the creation of a small IT development team in government a government skunkworks' - that can develop low-cost IT applications in-house and advise on the procurement of large projects, inferring the apparent lack of skills in current government to manage amorphous IT-contracted projects. [...]
Poll Finds Local Gov’t CIOs Want Less Central Control
Public sector IT provider, Lagan Technologies said today that 92 percent of local government IT officials would be concerned if central government imposed restrictions on IT procurement across all tiers of government. [...] The looming election has focused local government minds on the negative influence of central government IT procurement and project management strategies. [...] Liam Maxwell, Conservative councillor, Policy and Performance Lead at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and author of the It's ours. why we, not government, must own our data, published by the Centre for Policy Studies last year agreed that central government had much to learn from local success. [...]
Experts Question Hungary’s Role As European Open Source Leader
In an open letter to the Hungarian government's procurement agency &mdash. Directorate General for Central Services (KSZF) &mdash. the ODFA states that last year the government spent around 9.5 billion Hungarian forints (£32m) on Microsoft software and has already spent € [...] This is one of the largest open source procurements I have seen and we applaud the Hungarian Government for leading the way in introducing competition and cutting back on proprietary software purchases, said Roger Burkhardt, chief executive of Ingres. In my opinion, the Hungarian Government is showing the European Union that there is plenty of open source competition in the market today. [...] But other players in the open source tendering process in Hungary have pointed out that two other consortia also won in the process and that it only allows open source players to be included in a centralised IT tendering framework, rather than being an actual commitment on the part of the Hungarian government to spend $22. [...]
Microsoft Takes Teachers To Brazil
In an open letter issued last month to the Hungarian government's procurement agency - Directorate General for Central Services (KSZF) - the Open Document Format Association states the government has already spent 6.3m Euros on educational licenses and millions more on consultation and services from the software giant. [...] Networking Cost Virtual / Sector Work Real / Budgets Public sector Government st. [...] Amid calls from local authorities to use open source software and cut costs, Microsoft is holding a teachers' conference in Brazil. [...]
EC Questions Security Of Open Source Software
Elsewhere in Europe, other countries including Switzerland and Hungary have seen action taken by open source backers to force governments to break-down barriers to the use of non-proprietary software in the public sector. In an open letter to the Hungarian government's procurement agency earlier this month - Directorate General for Central Services (KSZF) - the Open Document Format Alliance (ODFA) stated that last year the government spent around 9. [...] Smith also stated that the UK is leading the way in Europe when it comes to using the internet to improve public services - another facet of the e-government directive being announced on Thursday. With a huge range of public services available online, pioneering work taking place to free-up data and the world's first plan to systematically cut the carbon emissions of government IT systems, Britain is leading the way in e-Government. [...] Speaking ahead of the launch of a European declaration on approaches to e-government in Europe up to 2015 in Malmo, Sweden, vice president of the European Commission Siim Kallas stated in a webcast that although the commission was behind the idea of adopting open source and open standards, such approaches to IT have implications for security and business continuity that governments must consider. [...]
UK Public Sector Asks for £1 Billion For Radical IT Change
Central Government money could get a quick payback and help meet carbon targets projects by overhauling local IT, says SOCITM. [...] Local government, on the other hand, has huge opportunities through sharing services and collaboration, he said. The proposed stimulus package would address one barrier to this - a lack of capital - but the meeting raised other issues, including the difficulty of accessing IT knowledge to design projects without breaking EC rules on procurement, and the privacy issues involved in sharing data between departments. [...] The UK's public sector IT managers have repeated a call for a £1 billion stimulus package to radically overhaul services in local government, health and education, which would reduce carbon emissions and deliver rapid savings back to the stimulus fund. [...]
Ditch Microsoft, Save £269m Says Hungarian Open Source Group
In an open letter to the Hungarian government's procurement agency - Directorate General for Central Services (KSZF) - the ODFA states that last year the government spent around 9.5bn Hungarian forints (35 million Euros) on Microsoft software and has already spent 6. [...] In September, the Hungarian government did approve a scheme that allows open source companies to compete for a share of public sector contracts but admitted at the time that half the IT budget is still reserved for Microsoft. The Hungarian Government list previously only included proprietary products, naming Microsoft and Novell as the only choices with an allocated sum of 25 billion Hungarian Forint (HUF or 80 million Euros, £27. [...] In particular, the open source groups are calling on the government to adopt the ODF open document format which would free the public sector from its reliance on Microsoft Office. The government could save around 300m Euros (£269m) over the four year lifetime of its software contracts with Microsoft by swichting to ODF. [...]
Government’s New ICT Strategy Could Save £3.2bn
The news is likely to be music to the ears of some Green ICT advocates, including Catalina McGregor who has been campaigning together with the ITU for IT to be front-and-centre at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December. The document not only advises that Green ICT principles should be incorporated into all elements of the government's ICT strategy including supply chain and procurement strategies but that Government ICT should be carbon neutral across its lifecycle by 2020. [...] The UK government already has an open source policy, which states that government will actively and fairly consider open source solutions alongside proprietary ones in making procurement decisions. It hopes that this will enable it to save £600 million a year, but the policy has been criticised for its lack of teeth. [...] The UK government is working on a new holistic telecoms strategy which could save the country £3.2 billion over the next ten years, according to a leaked draft of a document entitled Government ICT Strategy. New World, New Challenges, New Opportunities. [...]
CBI Calls For Government Support On Low-Carbon Innovation
And, to lead by example, it also said government procurement should help drive demand for low-carbon products and support large-scale technology demonstration with national infrastructure upgrade projects, like its Digital Britain strategy. [...] Key recommendations urged new policies to support cutting-edge industries that help cut carbon, changes to government procurement to foster take-up of low-carbon technology and accelerating national infrastructure projects in areas like energy generation. [...] Britain has great expertise in low-carbon technology and research. This must be encouraged and supported by government, but we also need policies that help to implement advances in technology in practical and commercially-viable ways, stated John Cridland, CBI Deputy Director-General. [...]
Google Apps Receives US Government Accreditation
While the Google Apps for Government has been accorded FISMA for federal credibility, Google expects this will have a trickle down effect into the state and local municipalities, said Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google Apps, said during a media event on 26 July. [...] This means Google Apps for Government will run in the cloud on servers located in a dedicated data centre facility somewhere in the continental United States, exclusively for our government customers, said the suite's Technical Program Manager Kripa Krishnan in a blog post. [...] FISMA calls for all information systems used by U.S. federal government agencies to have the utmost security. The GSA sports 15,000 e-mail accounts and oversees government procurement in the U.S. [...]
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