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.

Governments Dive Into Open Source: How Deep is the Pool?

Over the last few years we have seen a steady wave of news stories, blog postings and seminars have been telling us that the government is making a big splash by making open source IT solutions a priority. No doubt the rising tide of open open source will reach government just as it is reaching the rest of the software industry ... as Mark Radcliffe put it, open source is the Borg and resistance is futile! Even so, constituents have felt few drops from the splash that open source software has made, particularly here in Silicon Valley where it might be expected to be more prevalent. Consider this:

• Municipal/City Government - I live in San Jose, California, a city that proclaims itself the “Capital of Silicon Valley”, is home to some of the world’s largest technology companies, and host to an innovative festival combining technology and the arts. These high-tech credentials have not translated into adoption open source. In fact, the city rejected a 2008 proposal to ease budget pressures through the adopting lower cost open source software on the grounds that it would have limited impact and was inconsistent with other strategies.

• County Government - As far as I can tell, Santa Clara County, which includes the City of San Jose, has not adopted or even significantly considered the adoption of open source software on any meaningful scale.

• State Government - California, to its credit, is one of several states that seems to have made the adoption of open source a priority. Not only did the State formally authorize a search for open source replacements to proprietary software but, as Matt Asay has highlighted, the CIO for the California Air Resources Board has encouraged his staff to use open source software in any way possible. Other states have even gone so far as to propose legislation requiring the consideration of open source alternatives in any IT procurement.

• Federal/National Government - The US Federal Government has seen a steady increase the use of open source over the last several years, and this has been a regular topic of discussion by open source commentators such as open source commentators. The Department of Defense in particular has invested a great amount of resources into open source and has made significant efforts to reach out to the open source community.

• Regional/Continental Government - The open source movement has touched even higher levels of government. As the most prominent example, the European Union is probably the single biggest adopter of open source, with a pipeline of open source priorities that will likely keep the EU ahead of the curve for years to come.

These anecdotes are just a sampling of the type of news constantly swirling about government adoption of open source. While open source almost certainly is being utilized in critical government infrastructure and other ways that are not readily discernable to people other than IT administrators, all levels of government can do more to grab the wave of unique value that open source software provides and apply it in ways that better serve its constituents. Some governmental bodies, such as the EU and its member states, seem to have jumped into the deep end of the pool. (Matthew Aslett at the 451 Group recently embarked on an open source tour of Europe that has resulting in intriguing insights on the status of open source in Europe as a whole as well as specific countries including Austria, Switzerland, Romania and Russia.) In the meantime, governmental entities here in Silicon Valley continue to splash in the kiddie pool, or choose not to get wet at all. With some prominent exceptions of specific agencies that are clearly in the "deep end", the federal government and various states are wading in deeper pool waters, but no further than their feet can touch.

In my next post, I'll discuss some thoughts on a framework for government open source adoption that avoids the pitfalls of mandating it through legislation.