Government plans to use more open source software

New guidelines suggest avoiding proprietary offerings

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25 February 2009 17:24 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

The UK government has said it is to implement plans to accelerate the take-up and use open source software within the country's public services.

In a move that some in the open source industry suggest could save the government around £600 million a year, under the new plans open source offerings should be chosen when they deliver "best value for money".

Tom Watson, the minister for digital engagement, said that open source software would be on a level playing field with proprietary software such as Windows and that public services should actually avoid being "locked into proprietary software".

The software that the government could source from open source offerings includes office and productivity related software including word processing, spreadsheets, etc, as well as document management and database infrastructure.