Government pleas for open source business cases

ITPRO - The deputy CIO has promoted the cause of using open source in Government IT, but he needs more proof of cost savings before he gets the thumbs up from the Treasury. Open Source has the full support of one member of the Government's IT Management, but he has asked for more business cases to show how it can save the Coalition cash.

Bill McCluggage, deputy chief information officer (CIO) for the Government, used his keynote at today's 360 IT event at Earls Court to outline future plans for Government IT, and one of his first ports of call was open source. “We do operate in an environment where open source is used but it is only a minority,” he claimed, admitting our European counterparts were more advanced when it comes to adoption. “Our view there is... we can go heavily into specifying open standards... opening the way for open source to get in.”