John Spencer talks to Dr Stephen Lucey, who having joined Becta in 2000 is now their Executive Director (Strategic Technologies). Becta is the Governmental organisation which has oversight of all things ICT in UK schools. Specifically, apart from being a general advocate for ICT in schools, it is charged with providing strategic leadership, technical direction and advice on obtaining best value. Becta has recently shown that it is unafraid of speaking out on behalf of schools. Unhappy with the value for money schools were getting regarding software licencing they first referred Microsoft to the OFT then sent shock waves through schools when it issued its advice not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007. Becta has consistently maintained an interest and a monitoring brief on the progress of Open Source software in education and this interview explores some of their current thinking.

JS: With regard to Becta's recent advice to schools referred to in the introduction, do you think that a respite from the upgrade cycle will cause more schools to consider FOSS as an alternative?

SL: Well the key message in our advice to schools, colleges and other FE providers in relation to Vista and Office 2007, based on extensive research, was that there were no “must have” benefits to compensate for the considerable costs of upgrading. The days of educational institutions just “chasing” the latest release of a product are hopefully, long gone. ICT investments must be based on an assessment of how they will help the institution deliver its educational vision in a cost effective and sustainable way. So I hope our advice will encourage more institutions to think carefully about their ICT spending priorities, and examine the full range of choices that are available to them. Will this help Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)? Debatable - some educational institutions have an attachment to the philosophy underpinning FOSS, and will adopt it for those reasons. However most institutions do not purchase ICT solutions on the basis of a software development methodology, but on the basis of what best meets their needs. So the major opportunity for FOSS will be via solution providers who can integrate them into an offering which is seen as an overall solution.

JS: To what extent do you feel that modern school ICT reflects vendor-driven change rather than a needs-driven agenda?

SL: I think this is less true nowadays than it was in the past. Educational institutions are developing a more critical understanding of their needs. The move to functional specifications as the mechanism for defining requirements either in Becta’s Frameworks or in BSF procurements is really helping this process. This approach requires the institution to think much more carefully about what it is procuring than would have been the case otherwise. Additionally we have established a Consultancy Framework Agreement. Through this educational institutions and Local Authorities can get access to high calibre advice on how best to frame their requirements. This helps ensure that their ICT systems support their educational vision, and are not unduly driven by what the vendor wants to sell. The best vendors in the marketplace really understand that their interests are best served by providing solutions that positively impact on the institution's needs as opposed to those which are just easy to sell.

JS: It would seem self-evident that FOSS should be very beneficial to schools with regard to value for money, and indeed one of your reports a few years ago confirmed this potential. To date however FOSS has made only modest inroads into the education sector. What do you think is the main reason for this?

SL: I have no doubt about the increasing potential of FOSS. However I think one of the critical limiting issues is that we do not have accurate data on the extent of use of FOSS based products and services so we are not really sure of how and where they are being effectively used. If we are to increase competition and choice in the marketplace we need to understand where products and services are being used successfully and where they are not. So for example we need better data that lets us understand the FOSS uptake as the desktop operating system, as desktop applications, on school based servers, in internet and email connectivity etc. For each of those segments we need to know what is being done, what the ICT supply side is considering and what Becta needs to do to help that competitive opportunity develop. We have some interesting ideas here and hope to develop a significant debate with the sector later this year.

Also, the regulatory framework needs to be right. At the licensing level, we need to address situations where the marketplace is foreclosed to FOSS, and at the interoperability level we need to make sure that there is a true level playing field. We have been able to address some of these challenges via discussion with the supply side directly, and reach an agreed way forward. In other cases, we have had to call on the competition authorities. So a range of issues to address, but real progress is being made.

JS: Do you think that the differences between FOSS and proprietary software are understood by school buyers, or indeed do you think that this matters in any way at all?

SL: No I do not think such differences are well understood by schools, nor for the most part do I think they need to be. The point at which they do need to be understood is at the point where the school’s statement of requirements is being turned into a technical solution.

For example, when planning new ICT provision, an educational institution might have a requirement that says it wants to assist in reducing the digital divide by being able to legally provide copies of the office productivity software it uses to pupils and parents for no additional cost. When the ICT supply side comes to offer solutions to this requirement it needs to understand that this request is more likely to be met by FOSS software than by a proprietary offering and reflect this in their proposal back to the institution.

JS: Since you joined Becta, its main achievement surely must have been to bring order to the ICT procurement chaos that previously existed in schools. This was achieved in great part by the introduction of the Procurement Frameworks. Would you agree with that statement and do you feel now that there is a danger that domination by a few major suppliers will stifle innovation which invariably comes from smaller companies?

SL: We have made good progress in recent years but we have further to go. Framework agreements underpinned by effective functional and technical standards are a major part of our work. They are also a key tool in helping ensure an effective marketplace that works to the advantage of all educational institutions and ultimately of learners. We review our functional and technical standards annually to ensure they are current and reflect the changes taking place in a fast moving environment and make best use of available open standards. We also need to ensure that our Frameworks identify suppliers who satisfy our defined service standards and are able to provide compliant solutions rather than then just being a list of approved products.

We also review each of our frameworks regularly to ensure that they meet the needs of their users and offer value for money. The UK has one of, if not the most vibrant and dynamic educational ICT marketplaces in the world, so I think that domination by a single supplier or a small group of suppliers is increasingly unlikely.

All our procurements are conducted in strict accordance with EU regulations with all the attendant openness and guarantees of equitable treatment to all bidders. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get accused of being secretive. In fact, we have a website dedicated to explaining how our Frameworks operate and we are more than happy to answer questions put to us.

On the issue of innovation, I do not really think one can automatically argue that innovation “invariably” comes from smaller companies. For example, the Asus PC is an example of an innovative product within education – Asus had a reported turnover in 2007 of $6.9 billion! Now that is not to say we do not value small companies – we do. Latest figures indicate that SMEs form about 99% of UK companies so they are a very important part of the economy and the ICT in education marketplace. This is reflected by the fact that SMEs form a high proportion of the companies on our Frameworks. In some Frameworks this proportion would be as high as 70%, and overall SMEs make up over 60% of the companies on our Frameworks. But Frameworks are not the only mechanism we can use to ensure effective competition and help SMEs operate in the sector. Ensuring effective interoperability is another important tool. So for example when we published our MIS and Value for Money report in 2005 we were clear that improved interoperability arrangements were crucial. We identified SIF, tailored to UK needs as the most likely way forward. Now encouragingly we were able to bring together a community of interest which was wide ranging, involving the dominant supplier, to agree a way forward on SIF that is acceptable. So in that instance we did not need to seek the intervention of the competition regulator.

Unfortunately that was not the case with document interoperability in the office productivity space, where despite considerable efforts, interoperability arrangements remain unacceptable. So in October 2007 when it became clear we were not making progress we moved to refer the issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading as part of a formal complaint. In January 2008 the European Commission launched its own investigation into this issue, covering similar ground, and we have now intervened directly with the Commission to ensure that the interoperability matters we had initially referred to the OFT (including implications for the digital divide and mitigating against effective Home School links), are now addressed by the Commission's new investigation. But intervention via the competition authorities is not our preferred approach. Ideally we want to work in partnership with the industry and we are doing so in a range of ways. We welcome the recent formation of SALTIS (Suppliers Association for Learning Technology and Interoperability in Schools) and look forward to working with them.

JS: Open source companies often complain long and loud about being shut out from the frameworks. Do you think they have some justification or do you feel frustration when you hear this and tend to feel that in fact with regard to trading with schools, Open Source companies can be their own worst enemies?

SL: Well I’m not sure I would go as far as frustration, but it’s obviously a disappointment when any category of potential suppliers feels that they are not able to compete effectively in the marketplace. Becta’s ambition is a vibrant and competitive marketplace that is providing high quality, innovative products and services that all learning providers value, can afford and can depend upon. At every layer of our National Digital Infrastructure (institutional infrastructure and home access, connectivity, data services and learning services) OSS solutions have a role to play and I am keen that they play it. Indeed if the general ICT marketplace is anything to go by it will be an increasing role. So to the extent that Open Source companies want to compete, and Becta wants to promote competition, we have a shared agenda. Now I know you might not think that’s the case judging from some of the (not entirely accurate) blogging out there but I want to get beyond that level of debate. I want an ongoing professional and constructive dialogue with the open source community helping us to understand the issues and where possible put in place appropriate actions. This should help make OSS products and related services a more compelling offering for educational institutions. And that helps competition. I believe that our frameworks do allow such competition, but it’s not really what I think that counts, it’s what suppliers that want to compete think. So we are having a careful look at our arrangements, talking to key users of our Frameworks like BSF. We will also be developing our dialogue with the wider industry and the OSS community about the uptake of OSS, looking to see how we can improve the overall competitive climate.

JS: I know you are keen that more use of technology is made by teachers and students. Do you think that the emergence of the ultra-low cost notebooks such as RM's minibook and the Elonex One will help drive up the use of ICT?

SL: Yes I think that they have certainly a role to play in improving access and addressing digital divide issues. These devices have really captured the interest of the wider consumer market, not just the educational market and I expect to see further innovation in that space sooner rather than later. They bring together an interesting combination of a new form factor - a Linux based operating system, OpenOffice.org as the productivity suite and at an attractive price point. They are therefore likely to ensure more users experience an open source product that just “does what it says on the tin” and from a competition perspective that is good news.

But they also reinforce the importance of the issues we have referred to the competition regulator. This relates to circumstances where schools using Microsoft’s School Agreement licensing model, are required to pay Microsoft licensing fees for computers based on Linux, or using OpenOffice.org. Finding ourselves in a position whereby a school pays (say) £169 for a device only to be faced with for example a £30 per year after year payment to Microsoft, for a system that is not running any of their software would just not be acceptable to Becta. Indeed I don’t think many people would consider that fair.

So whilst a number of suppliers are innovating and bringing new OSS based products to the marketplace, Becta must act decisively to ensure that neither they nor schools are disadvantaged by restrictive licensing agreements imposed by a dominant player.

JS: Looking to the future once again, schools have a target of being carbon neutral by 2016. Given the complexity and power of modern school ICT systems how is Becta helping them to achieve this target?

SL: DCSF has set a target that all new school build should be carbon neutral by 2016, with the added intention that by 2020 all schools will be ‘sustainable schools’. Clearly the greater use of technology and the introduction of longer school days have the potential to raise energy consumption just at the time when we are trying to reduce them. So Becta in conjunction with its partners intends to help in a number of ways.

Firstly by working to increase the extent to which energy compliant products are procured and used by educational institutions. Secondly we will work to ensure that the energy efficient features of existing products are effectively used. We will also help with advice on how to use technology to help educational institutions reduce their environmental impact. Lastly but by no means least we will help institutions ensure that they reduce their use of IT related consumables.

We are becoming more active in this area and have useful guidance for schools online. At BETT this year we had a seminar on ICT and Environmental Sustainability and yes before you ask – it can be downloaded in Open Document Presentation Format.

JS: Thank you very much Steve, I very much appreciate you taking the time to talk so openly. I am sure that there will be much to comment on and very much hope our readers make their contributions to the debate.

John Spencer talks to Tim Pearson Chief Executive of RM. RM is the largest most successful supplier of ICT to the UK education market and, for good measure, is British too. Tim has been there from the start and so is really now Mr RM. This autumn he gave the school ICT world a jolt when RM announced its Asus miniBook. It retails to schools for only £169 and runs Open Source software throughout. The miniBook has preceded an avalanche of new products and new thinking.

JS: You were part of RM during the heady, exciting days of the first computers in ordinary schools, viz the big black 480z; do you think we'll have so much fun ever again?

TP: Not quite from the start, but I have been here since before the launch of the 480Z in 1981.

There were two things I really liked about that time: you knew you were at the start of a new technology that had a long way to go – we were developing the first low cost microcomputer network with Digital Research and Zilog at the time; and also, the levels of abstraction in the technology were sufficiently few that one person could have a chance of understanding pretty much everything that was going on in a system.

Nowadays – whilst I am sad enough to say that I miss the joys of assembler programming, in binary – the upside is you can start to produce really powerful and nice looking software much more easily.

JS: Did you anticipate that the Asus Minibook (aka EeePC ) would sell out within two days of it's launch?

TP: Inside the company it has been the subject of a public joke between me and our Chief Operating Officer. Last August, I said that we would sell ten-times the number he had forecast. As this became the subject of a very public £10 bet, he set his team the task of meeting my target less one! More seriously, it's been hard to forecast when we have no real experience selling at this price point before, neither have we ever sold a machine with a Linux-based client OS before.

Getting sufficient quantities to meet demand has been very hard – in fact, I don't think we’ve had free stock since we launched last year. We do our best to give a realistic forecast of lead time on a daily basis on our Web site though. We have now started taking orders for an XP version as well, but we’ve not shipped any of those yet.

JS: Do you think that the difference between FOSS and proprietary software is something that is understood by purchasers in the education sector, moreover is it important in any way that it is?

TP: No and No!

It's important to take yourself out of our techie world and into the world of a typical head teacher or subject teacher. As a generality, they’re worried about benefits to their pupils and costs to their school, the term FOSS doesn't mean much to most of them. This is a factual observation, not a judgemental one. Sure, school and authority technical staff understand completely, but this is a tiny minority of the 500,000 school staff out there.

Does it matter? No not really. On the Board at RM we have two of the World's top educationalists – Sir Mike Tomlinson and Professor Tim Brighouse. When you use terms like GNU, Linux and Open Source with them, well they are slightly intrigued that such things exists, but it does not capture their interest. What they want to talk about is how these things are used in schools – and why pupils get a better deal as a result.

It would be wrong to say that the miniBook success proves Linux is better than Microsoft. I know some of your readers will hate me saying it, but I suspect many users might prefer a Microsoft operating system. Where Microsoft should be worried though is that users are saying: look, at this price point, with a full-featured Web browser, combined with the small form factor and solid state disk, the operating system is 'good enough'. There you are, now I have offended just about everyone in the world of IT in a single paragraph!

JS: The Open Source software world is founded on collaborative enterprise and community projects. Do these kinds of phrase find resonance with RM's emerging thinking now that FOSS plays a significant role in your software portfolio?

TP: Thus far not; going forward possibly. Let me explain. Software will continue to support both 'proprietary' and Open Source models. There’s an analogy – if you have a group of friends who play in a band and make great music for their own pleasure, then it's really nice to hear them play at the local pub or in a local community centre. It's definitely a 'feel good' experience to listen to them, knowing that they are doing it for their own pleasure and for the pleasure of entertaining others. Does that mean we should regard The London Symphony Orchestra as last-century's-immoral-music-for-dollars-business-model? Well no, they try and do different things and there is nothing wrong with professionals expecting to get a living wage for what they do.

I think what is to come in software will be different though. In the market that RM serves, there aren't many teachers who want to contribute to overall community progress by doing some coding on the Linux kernel. However, as the range of tools for developing content improves and high quality interactive content development becomes no more difficult than, say, driving PowerPoint , we will see far more community based activity. RM, through our 3T subsidiary, is developing tools under the name FUSE that are attempting to allow just such a revolution.

We have also developed some of our core software, like our Web based schools MIS system IntegrisG2, so its front end will run on all the major Web browser and its servers can be operated using either Microsoft or Open Source operating systems and databases – this is because we will see different jurisdictions around the world wanting to use all of those environments.

JS: Could you see RM working together with the OSS community on education projects? Even, dare I say it, have you considered releasing some of your star software such as EasyTeach under the GPL?

TP: I certainly could see us working with the OSS community and we have in the past discussed the possibility of releasing some software on GPL. That doesn't mean that everything we can do will be like this though or that we might do it soon, but I certainly can see opportunities.

As I said earlier though, I’m more interested in teachers using an ‘open source’ approach to collaborate in creating learning resources, perhaps using something like our FUSE tools. Few teachers are motivated to build code – but they’re all interested in better ways of teaching and learning, and they’re all interested in working with and learning from their colleagues.

JS: I know that you have many concerns about patent restrictions, what is exercising you most in this area at present?

TP: I know it might be strange to hear me say it, but I felt for a long time that intellectual property protection across the world is too biased in favour of businesses, in a counter productive way. I like copyright because it is simple, understandable, and non-bureaucratic but, if I were Prime Minister for a day, I'd limit its term to, say, 20 years for all works and provide the UK with clearer fair-use rights than the EU, UK or US have now.

As far as patents go, they are a simple bargain between society and inventors: we’ll give you a limited monopoly in exchange for publishing your invention and bringing advances publicly to society. That sounds fair enough when it is applied to major advances; unfortunately, the bar is set far too low and so in all jurisdictions, but particularly the US, it seems that we allow trivial patents to become instruments of blackmail. Always remember, we live in a world which has awarded a patent to swinging sideways on a swing.

If you compare this ‘patent blackmail’ with how competition authorities treat price fixing (think: suits with arrows on), we have got the balance wrong. This is not a trivial matter for businesses either, we are almost forced into a spiral of lodging more patents so we have an armoury to threaten back anyone that comes to threaten us. This results in lots of money for lawyers and no real advance for society. I don't have any of our 2500 staff trawling the patent office for major advances as, again, the bar is too low, most of what is there is trivial.

Again, if I were Prime Minister for a day, I'd make patents restricted to really valuable, really novel advances (I know that is hard to measure but I do think there are ways). Not all industries are the same, if you look at big-pharma, where they might spend 10 years on a single molecule – working out what might work synthesising it, testing it, being able to scale production – I think they have a better case for protection than someone that came up with a cool search algorithm over lunch.

JS: The Minibook uses the rather well finished Xandros Linux OS (I have one of my own). Xandros signed a 'no sue' agreement with Microsoft last year do you think this will be a necessary trend for other OSS companies?

TP: I suspect not, it was certainly not part of our consideration either way.

What are your views on bridging the so called 'digital divide'? I know RM has made several moves to supply rugged laptops to the less privileged in the past and are trialling handheld devices at the moment. Do you see the new generation of sub notebooks such as the Minibook, coupled with Open Source software, as a critical development in this direction?

TP: Products like the miniBook absolutely are powerful weapons against the digital divide. They’re affordable, usable and attractive – perhaps even ‘cool’. I think what we have learnt is that there is a space between traditionally full featured portables, and smartphones that is a good space for getting everyone online – devices that have a small but credible keyboard and screen and support one of the mainstream browsers are generally a good way forward.

JS: Becta, with whom I know you work closely, often gets a lot of flack from the small innovative Open Source companies with regard to the absence of a level playing field enshrined in their procurement frameworks. Do you think the smaller companies are unreasonable to feel shut out?

TP: I think that for major supply of managed services or mission critical products and services, then it is inevitable that you need to be of a certain size to credibly stand behind the liabilities that you are signing on to. This is a reality of IT procurement the world over, not something of Becta’s making., you should see some of the contracts we are expected to sign elsewhere in the world!

I think to have an effective voice then it is essential that smaller companies join BESA the trade association who can influence on their behalf.

JS: There is much discussion nowadays about interoperability and open standards. What contribution to this goal do you think can be best made by RM? For example there is much talk about the open document format. Would you like to see schools moving in that direction?

TP: I think that if there were a few more techies in government and a few less lawyers we would not be where we are! This is probably the subject that annoys me more than any other. Policy makers in general just do not seem to understand the open goal that they are missing by not allowing or encouraging standards to be set for education interoperability. The UK has had the most advanced supply industry for educational IT of any nation in the world; we risk losing that position because policy makers neither seem to know nor understand the dynamics around setting technical standards.

My favourite example is the USB port. Those of us who can count to 1023 on our fingers (2¹⁰-1) can probably still remember the sinking feeling when a friend, neighbour or colleague asked us to sort out something that needed to be connected to the PC via RS232C – dip switches, command line driver switches and cable genders would all need to be messed around with in between mumbled incantations to the Gods to make stuff work. Then a group of industry people got together and defined the USB port. Overnight the chances of plugging a peripheral in and having it work first time went from 5% to 85%. It also grew the market as people were more ready to design and buy peripherals.

In the UK we are in a situation where I think Becta is not very keen for industry to set the standards, but does not seem to be setting a blazing trail to do it themselves. They are making progress – for example, in whiteboard interoperability – but in the key areas of major platform interoperability, we are waiting and waiting. It seems like a missed opportunity. Note that I really don't think this is about open document standards – they will be decided on a much bigger stage than the UK education market. This is about the specific standards for use in educational technology, things like SIF or IMS.

JS: Finally, RM has been the only ICT supplier at the BETT show for the previous two years to have addressed the issue of power consumption by computers in schools. How do you foresee the future development and importance of green computing in schools?

TP: At a (very) macro level, you just have to pray that we don't keep discovering new oil reserves. We all know that the human race as a collective is sufficiently lacking of self-discipline that, if we find it, we will burn it!

At a (very) micro level there are three interlinked variables that affect our users: noise, heat and power consumption. A typical classroom in the UK is not, and will not be, air conditioned. It’s not actually illegal, but it is hard to construct a new school building within current building guidance that has air conditioned classrooms. Thirty computers and monitors in a classroom purchased in 2005 probably consumed close to 8KW of electricity and turned that into heat – 30 pupils add another 3KW - So that is why heat is an issue for our customers.

If you look at a typical desktop computer it has at least three fans (to get rid of all the heat) and sometimes as many as five. If you have 30 computers in a classroom that is at least 90 fans – and if you push the ambient noise level up then there is plenty of good, solid, evidence about how the learning in the classroom becomes less effective. So if you can lower power consumption you can have fewer fans and less heat and better learning!

Looking at both ends of the scale then – those are the two reasons why we have spent more than three years focusing engineering effort on lowering power consumption. We have come a long way – we are down to complete system consumption of below 80W today and we are already working on systems for 2009 with a further step reduction. Our target for next year is to get a complete system from our ecoquiet range, including monitor, down to 50W or less. We have just launched an ecoquiet server and are working on other products.

P.S. We don't just do this to flog kit. We have also got our car fleet to an average of 44mpg, and we lowered our internal electricity consumption by more than 10% last year, and are doing twenty other things all in the same area –these are driven by all of our staff rather than just the management team.

Things could hardly be tougher in the Whitehall front line. Last year Gordon Brown made it clear in his budget speech just what he expects – 4% annual growth in spending on front line services financed out of just 2% overall budget growth.

Enacting this latter day miracle of loaves and fishes is not going to be easy. But it will not happen at all unless Whitehall ends its chronic failure to use market power to deliver sustainable savings in the massive bill the public sector pays for software.

Nowhere else would departments or their agencies tolerate a monopoly or a monoculture. Imagine if every department decided, as policy, to buy its hardware from the same supplier. Of course innovation wouldn’t stop – improvements in manufacturing and the fundamental laws of physics would see to that. But the pace would slow – what’s the incentive if the buyer is locked in? – and the price would rocket.

And that is exactly where we are with software.

Whitehall needs to apply the lessons it has learnt everywhere else – not just that markets drive down cost and improve quality but that sustaining markets requires active fostering with regular deal flow and sufficient encouragement to the supplier community to keep stepping up to the wicket to compete for the work.

We do not expect proprietary software to disappear from the public sector. We don’t even expect, in the short to medium term at least, that there will be a massive shift away from current suppliers to a more heterogeneous world. But we do think that unless Whitehall acts to create a mixed market in software supply then long term savings will be impossible to deliver.

The open source business model is a different one from the proprietary model that currently dominates. And we think those differences mean even a relatively small use of open source will drive big changes that benefit purchasers and ultimately the public.

The key insight of the open source model is that the software you use should be yours to control and customise. It’s not a new concept: the internet depends on open source to direct you to the site you want to see. And the TCP/IP protocols that carry almost all network traffic – whether on the internet or not - have driven out proprietary alternatives not because of heavy handed marketing or the famous “fear, uncertainty and doubt” beloved of computer salesmen of old, but precisely because they are open and so strengthened by peer review.

That openness means that there is a common interest in driving improvements and innovation, making software more reliable, more robust and even simpler to use. And open source is big business: the Linux operating system, at the core of so many open source projects, might have been started in the bedroom of a Finnish student, but today it is at the heart of a multi-billion dollar industry that is revolutionising the way IT works.

We have already seen this in the private sector. Moving to new software solutions based on the open source business model is saving Specsavers, Europe's fastest growing opticians group, hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in licensing alone. Yes, there are costs of transition from one set of software to another, but they are broadly comparable to the familiar cycle of software upgrades that proprietary users have to face every two to five years. The difference is that open source delivers year on year savings once we've got over the hump of the software upgrade.

Bringing those benefits to the public sector might require some people to take what seem like counter-intuitive decisions. The first thing that the big proprietary software firms do when they hear a government department are considering opting for a more diverse range of software suppliers is pitch up at their door offering big discounts.

These tactics have worked well for the proprietary software sellers. Britain only ranks sixth amongst public sector users of open source in the EU. Yet few would claim that means we have better quality IT infrastructure or a better record of delivering IT-led service transformation.

But, like the offers in the summer sales, the discounts offered one day are recouped by mark-ups sought at a later date and, particularly when the purchasers are big central departments, purchasing decisions need to be made in the general interest of the taxpayer, not simply on the basis of who is offering the cheapest price on that one day.

And the supplier lock-in does more than keep costs high, it stifles innovation. Ten years ago the “browser wars” were big news in IT – with two proprietary solutions – Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer – battling it out to be the desktop gateway to the web. Internet Explorer – offered at the ultimate discount of the ‘free’ download (of course the costs were bundled into the cost of the operating system licence) – eventually crushed Netscape. But with the competition gone, the browser technology stagnated, with the only updates being the endless security patches designed to beat the growing army of ‘blackhats’ trying to hijack our machines.

But then, just not even three years ago, version 1.0 of the open source son of Navigator, Firefox, was released. Suddenly, competition kicked in as open source developers brought their expertise to the browser project. Today as much as a quarter of the world’s internet browsers are using Firefox and while Internet Explorer remains the default choice for most of us, it has radically improved as its developers face up to a struggle to keep market share.

The lesson is that the only way to deliver long term cost savings and sustainable quality improvements will be to actively sponsor some bio-diversity in the software world. A few years ago that could quite easily have been done though the use of proprietary software – in word processors think of Wordstar, AmiPro and Wordperfect – but that option has largely gone: only open source has had the strength to resist the monopoly.

We have been able to resist because we have been able to demonstrate quality. Two key aspects of the open source philosophy – that in general a piece of software should do just one thing but do it well and that individual pieces of software should be designed to work together through the use of open and extensible data formats – means that open source software now dominates the backbone of the internet.

Whitehall is often criticised for its aversion to risk as oppose to its willingness to manage it. Switching to a mixed market for software may strike some as a risk too far. Yet at the same time we work in a world where the Internet is taken to be a given, not just at the “five nines” level of reliability but always there, always on. That constancy is a token of open source, open protocols and open data. It is time these came to the public sector.