The Register reports today on a plan to move Venezuela’s government IT systems - from central government to the municipal level - to Open Source software. It’s a big move, and one that will take some time - up to two years in some cases. Intriguingly, an almost identical proposal was made in 2002, but never came to fruition - perhaps in part because of a letter from the Initiative for Software Choice, a coaltion of companies including Microsoft and Intel, warning the Venezuelan government of the problems Open Source could bring.
Open Source software is free to use and distribute, and so represents a huge saving for a small nation such as Venezuela. Venezuelanalysis.com, in this report, quotes former minister of Planning and Development, Felipe Perez Marti, as saying that the Vnezuelan government spent $7.5m on software licensing fees in 2004 - money that would be saved after a move to Open Source. And a move to Open Source benefits the internal economy, too. Instead of paying foreign companies such as Microsoft license fees, Venezuelan software firms and developers will instead be paid to develop software for government offices. There’s already an Open Source software industry in Venezuela, and the country even has its own Academy of Open Source Software, in Merida.
Open Source has many advantages, but large-scale migration to it, especially for governments, is a tricky proposal. Much commercial software, especially more specialised or esoteric products, have no Open Source equivalents, and so replacements have to be written from scratch. Re-training staff can also prove costly.
Could Open Source be a valid prospect for UK government? Perhaps. The Office of Government Commerce published a report last October into the viability of Open Source software for government. The report was positive; whilst not by any means recommending blanket deployment (as in Venezuela), the report suggested that in certain situations and environments, Open Source may be better or cheaper than commerical products. Several government bodies are already using Open Source software very successfully, on both workstations and servers. Where Open Source falls down is fitting into the eGov Interoperability Framework (eGIF), which is obviously crucial for any UK e-government project. Venezuela, with its comparatively simpler government IT systems, may just pull off the move to Open Source.