'Open source software offers government only limited potential to save money'

In recent years, the Dutch central government invested heavily in promoting open source software. As users of open software are not obliged to compensate the author for copyrights to the software, the government expects to save a lot of money. 

However, a report by the General Court of Auditors of The Netherlands adds quite a lot of question marks to this ambition. Yesterday, accountants of the Court announced that the use of freely available software, where no license fees are payable, will not amount to a substantial cut in ICT spendings for the government. Of the total expenditure on information and communication technology, only a small part leads back to paid computer programs. Even if all paid software was to be replaced by license-free programs, this would affect only a small proportion of total government IT costs.

At the request of the House of Representatives, the Court of Auditors examined the potential savings to be achieved through the wider application of open standards and open source software in central government. When software is ‘open’, the author does not claim copyrights to his work and allows each user to improve and redistribute the software. Internet browser Mozilla Firefox is a good example of this.

The Court found that in 2009, ministries spent € 88 million on computer programs for which realistic open alternatives are available. That is only 4 percent of total IT spending. The savings potential is therefore limited. Furthermore, moving toward open ICT technology is not really free. Deployment, update management and maintenance cost money too. Also, the transition to open source software may also  many active license agreements.

According to the Court of Auditors, government must make sure to set clear goals in their approach to open standards. The auditors advise to distinguish two main objectives for selecting appropriate IT. The first is efficiency of government organisation. It follows from how ministeries work and how they deal with information, which IT system suits them best. Secondly, strategic policy views on the use of IT in the national economy should be the driver of open source software policy. “We concluded amongst other things that the potential savings the government could make by making more use of open source software are limited. We also found that an approach to ICT based solely on the wish to cut costs is too restrictive,” the Court said.

Source: Court of Auditors of The Netherlands