Published on the 08/09/2009 | Written by Newsdesk
New Zealand Open Source Society initiative aims to encourage government agencies to look at open source as a way of cutting desktop computing costs…
The New Zealand Open Source Society has launched what it is calling the Public Sector Remix project with the aim of demonstrating “the viability of free open source software on public sector desktops”.
The project involves a number of central, regional and local government agencies are working together to run trials using free software for common desktop tasks.
NZOSS president Don Christie says: “When we asked participants what people need, they told us that 90% of the people, 90% of the time, have pretty simple needs:
document management (word processing, spreadsheet, mail and calendar), a web browser to access their modern line-of-business applications, and access to legacy client-server applications.”
The Remix project will deploy free open source software for nominated staff to use for these business tasks, and evaluate the results.
The project is not just about saving money for the whole of government,” Christie says.
“This is also about bringing choice back to the desktop and demonstrating the business value of software freedom.”
The society says participating agencies have identified four “business freedoms” enabled by open-sourcing:
• access to a competitive landscape offering choice of systems and suppliers,
• escape from vendor lock-in and mitigating the risk of vendor capture,
• flexibility to make a choice today that doesn’t remove the ability to make a choice tomorrow,
• control over software – the ability to share experiences and adapt software to an organisation’s needs.
NZOSS says the desktop pilot will help agencies make better decisions about future desktop strategy.
“It’s up to each agency where they choose to be on the spectrum from proprietary to free,” Christie says.
“Every investment decision gives an agency more business freedom, or less. The participants in the Remix project have decided that they need more.”
