Speak to the Government in Language it Understands

Last week Matt Asay explored the downside of governments legislating open source use, and the theme was extended by Dana Blankenhorn who pointed out that the migration to open source must be evolutionary rather than something stipulated to occur at a point in time. Matt went further this week by highlighting the EU's recent message to its member countries urging them to use more open source, with the very astute observation that the tactics of advocacy and persuasion are likely to be more effective than legislation. The time is right to explore strategies for accelerated government adoption of open source.

In essence, the debate on how best to accelerate government adoption of open source has boiled down to whether to dictate use through legislation, or persuade governments through the same grass roots persuasion used for years by the open source community. In my opinion, we should not discount the value of the right kind of legislation, which can accentuate the positive aspects of the types of community persuasion that have been so effective. An ideal approach would be to create legislation that encourages the government to make procurement decisions based on criteria indicative of high-quality open source products and projects.

To explain what I mean, think of Section 508. Section 508 is a US federal law requiring government agencies to consider accessibility factors when purchasing IT products. Federal procurement rules implementing the law provide more details on the specific types of factors to be considered. In short, the government is not permitted to purchase software or hardware that does not meet its minimum accessibility standards (such as for use by blind or motion impaired workers or members of the public who access government information) unless choosing a fully accessible product over a less accessible product would create an undue burden.

Applying this idea to open source, we should start by identifying the procurement criteria that are the most advantageous to open source products and projects. Lower cost is clearly a primary factor for enterprises in determining when to convert from proprietary to open source. After a recent tour of several Fortune 100 comanies, Zack Urlocker of Sun/MySQL noted that the current weakness in the economy appears to be enhancing the effectiveness of the "cost savings" sales pitch.

While the same economic benefits will be attractive to governments, the unique nature of government services means that other factors will be at least as important if not moreso. Fortunately, the conventional wisdom is that the open source development model, as compared to the standard proprietary model, results in quicker development times, higher-quality features, features more relevant to end users, better scalability, more customizable products and more secure products (which is particularly important to agencies like the US Department of Defense). This is something that open source companies already do in their data sheets, white papers and savings calculators to convince commercial customers that purchasing open source is a good idea.

In order to make this kind of legislation happen, the open source community would have to muster its resources and undertake a significant lobbying effort. Even if it's not successful in creating new procurement rules or legislation, this type of unified effort would possibly be the best marketing campaign in the history of open source. In any case, an emphasis on the right kind of legislation could accelerate the typical grass roots marketing efforts and sales pitches.