Press Coverage

Tory council's open source plans stymied as government considers policy - Computerweekly

A leading Tory council has been delayed in its attempt to replace Microsoft with open source software because the government is yet to fulfil an election pledge to introduce open standards.

The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead, one of the four "vanguard" councils testing the government's Big Society project, also came to the attention of Microsoft after its IT strategy promised in April to "move away from the Microsoft Office platform and replace it with an open source or cloud alternative".

FLOSS: the state of play in the UK sector: Mark Taylor

Mark Taylor's Keynote speech at Open World Forum in 2009.

Public sector ICT cuts - they do not have to hurt - ComputerworldUK

This week's Economist notes that in the current climate of public sector austerity in the UK, there are two strategies under way by the various interest groups.

The first is to assess rationally and realistically how to comply with the need to cut budgets, and to come up with a plan.

The second is to expend energy on arguing why one is a 'special case' and should therefore be excluded from the cuts.

Socitm, the association for ICT professionals in the public sectors, has taken the second approach.

Time for school IT to teach Open Source - ComputerworldUK

The Royal Society has just warned that Information technology lessons in UK schools are so dull they are putting pupils off the subject, and of course the idea of a career in IT. So no surprises there then.

Cuts, government IT and putting lipstick on a pig -ComputerworldUK

Britain faces an unprecedented age of financial restraint - and with that come huge demands on Government to reduce costs and deliver services for much less.

Debate is already turning to not just the level of cuts, but which services government should cease to offer altogether

Radical reform necessarily requires significant change to existing business process and systems, not just minor incremental change and tinkering around the edges.

One in four state IT contracts to go to SMEs, says Cable - ZDNet

A quarter of government contracts, including IT projects, are to be awarded to small businesses, according to business secretary Vince Cable.

Cable told ZDNet UK on Thursday that the government recognised it was difficult for small businesses to get through the current government procurement process.

"Our policy is to ensure that 25 percent of public procurement goes to the small business sector," said Cable. "We need to give access through small scale procurement."

FOSS vendors lick chops over ConLib IT plans - The Register

In the run-up to the General Election both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats made positive noises about open source software in their respective manifestos.

But now that a coalition government has been formed out of those blue and yellow political camps, will both parties actually stick to the Tories’ pledge of making UK.gov IT procurement more equal for open source, and how different are their commitments to the ones made by the previous Labour administration?

Red Hat hypervisor tools to run on Windows only: ZDNet

Open-source company Red Hat will initially offer its hypervisor management tools for Windows systems only.

Paul Cormier, Red Hat's president of products and technologies, told ZDNet UK at a press conference on Wednesday last week that the hypervisor management software for desktops and servers, which is due out before the end of the year, will be available only for systems running Microsoft's proprietary operating system.

Cormier said he had spent a long time reaching the decision.

The issues making IT a political hot potato: ZDNet

For the first time, it looks as if IT will become a significant political battleground at the next election, says Mark Taylor.

What does the fall of GM tell us about software?: ZDNet

It seems possible that the story of decline in US car manufacturing contains interesting parallels for the software industry, says Mark Taylor.