[okfn-za] Open Source in Government

[Adi Eyal]

Hi All

I'm working on a personal project which these groups may find
interesting. I'd like to build a case for why moving government
departments to using open source software makes economic sense. I'm
doing this by laboriously contacting each government department and
asking them what software they use and how much they pay for it.

Yes I know - I may be a little idealistic and a touch naive, but I'm
not trying to argue the philosophical merits of why open source
software may be better than proprietary software.

My logic is simply:

If government spends Rx billion annually importing proprietary
software and they rather redirect that money to the local software
community for installation, customisation, support and hosting then we
can create Y new jobs.

It's a lot of work but hopefully I can convince a few more people to
help me. I have data from 5 departments so far with a total annual
spend of over R26m.

I would really appreciate your help. Collecting this information is
time consuming. I plan to collect information across all spheres of
government which you can imagine is a mammoth task. Any contribution -
no matter how small would definitely ease the burden.

If you want more information - have a look at this link:
https://github.com/adieyal/gov-software-audit


Just one caveat - this project is not about complaining about
Microsoft or snide comments about whether government is useless,
inefficient or incompetent. I am an idealist and I prefer a naively
optimistic approach. Even if the project fails (and the odds are
against it), I think it is a worthwhile cause and will add another
voice to why this is a good thing.

Comments welcome.

Adi

-- 
Adi Eyal
Data Specialist
phone: +27 78 014 2469
skype: adieyalcas
linkedin: http://za.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Adi/Eyal