[okfn-za] Open Source in Government

Mon Aug 5 14:00:56 UTC 2013

On 5 August 2013 14:16, Adi Eyal <adi at burgercom.co.za> wrote:

> 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.
>

Really love this idea Adi!

> 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.
>

Key link here is:
https://github.com/adieyal/gov-software-audit#sounds-like-an-awesome-idea---how-can-i-help

Do you have a template (google doc / text file) that you are using that
others could reuse?

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

Could we turn this into a quick post on http://za.okfn.org/ or similar - I
can then share the link!

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.
>

I think this is very important. First stage should be a dispassionate audit
- if interesting points come out that's the next stage.

Rufus
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