For all of you in favor of improved security, increased procurement speed, improved quality and reduced cost to license and support, that light you see is the end of the proprietary tunnel. If you are in favor of vendor lock-ins, barriers to exit and massive integration projects and budget line items, I may not be able to help you.
From all that we have heard, read and seen, 2009 appears to be when our federal government will finally make open
source ready for primetime. And why not?
For some time, I have been touting the top six reasons for moving to open source:
1. Improved Security and Privacy over proprietary software
2. Increased procurement speed so agency's can get their programs deployed faster
3. No lock into one vendor, support can be provided by anyone since the code is in the public domain
4. Reduced cost of license and support, on average, open source products provide same functionality at a 80-90% lower cost to the taxpayers
5. Improved quality, normally, supported open source products go through three times more quality reviews than proprietary software as part of community review, indemnification review, and then productizing.
6. The Government can become part of the open source community and directly inject their specific requirements into the product.
I plan to create separate blogs on each of the six reasons for anyone still on the fence about moving to open source.
Open source has already proved itself allowing the National Health Information Network (NHIN) to develop a pilot solution that enables multiple federal agencies to securely link their existing systems to NHIN, allowing for the beginnings of a true electronic healthcare record. The pilot was developed with no need for long procurement cycles or massive costs since the entire software backbone is 100% open source.
We hope programs such as NHIN will lead the way to the day when government open source deployments will not be news anymore, they will be the norm.
Imagine a time when:
· The White House will be free from the shackles of proprietary systems and able to take advantage of both the transparency and the security of open source solutions.
· Agencies don’t need their IT solution criteria to focus on legacy and integration, and are able to seamlessly adopt new solutions based on cost and functionality.
· IT deployments are NOT antiquated before they are implemented.
Yes, that light at the end of the tunnel is approaching quickly and luckily, there isn’t a toll booth at the end.
