Government faces battle to drive open source procurement

The government faces a tough battle to meet its commitment to using open source software after a Freedom of Information request by the BBC revealed how much Whitehall spends with large vendors.

The data shows that most departments spend the majority of their IT budgets on software from large vendors rather than exploring alternatives, specifically open source vendors, which could offer huge savings.

For example, the Department for Work and Pensions spent £614,860 with Oracle, £92,125 with Microsoft and £433,077 with IBM in the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, the Home Office spent a whopping £21m of its £26m budget with defence technology firm Raytheon Systems for 'IT, broadcasting and telecoms software' and £514,561 with HP.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport spent £17,073 with RSA Security, £47,401 with Clearswift for email appliances and over £28,000 with Symantec for security products.

More information can be seen in Google documents that outline each department's spend, although the level of detail for each department varies based on the information provided.

The government has said on several occasions that it intends to push the use of open source as part of a drive to break its reliance on large vendors and reduce costs, but it appears to have a difficult task on its hands.

James Peel, product manager at open source firm Opsview, suggested that the figures underline the difficulty in changing the mindset around IT procurement, but urged Whitehall to oversee a change in buying strategy.

"There is a stigma around open source software, but there shouldn't be. The reality is it's just software - some of it good, some of it bad. The key is to evaluate the technology before signing up, just as you would any piece of software," he said.

"The problem is that too many people think the best software is the most expensive software. As a result they end up wasting money on expensive proprietary technology."