[Ecommerce] Malaysian government calls for more open source software

[James Love]

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http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/17/1829218.shtml?tid=117&tid=185&tid=98

Story in the Star...

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2004/7/16/technology/8461653&sec=technology
It's open source from now on
By RASLAN SHARIF

CYBERJAYA: All Government technology procurement will now have a
preference for open source software (OSS), under the Malaysian Public
Sector Open Source Software Masterplan made available to the public this
morning.

In what was its strongest show of support for OSS, the Government's
masterplan calls for policies to be put in place in several areas,
including procurement, that would favour such software.

The masterplan has been a topic of debate among ICT companies, local and
foreign, that supply goods and services to the Government.

Its objectives include reducing total cost of ownership and increasing
freedom of choice in the public sector, as well as reducing the digital
divide through the use of OSS, software in which the source code is
available to the general public for use and/ or modification free of
charge.

Proprietary software, like Microsoft Corp's Windows, is
tightly-controlled by its owners and only licensed to users under strict
conditions of use.

Under the masterplan, OSS procurement "should be based on merits, value
for money, transparency, security and interoperability."

However, it also states, "in situations where advantages and
disadvantages of OSS and proprietary software are equal, preference
shall be given to OSS."

The move looks set to generate more controversy, especially as some
vendors argue that a preference-based procurement policy would be unfair.

Asked about the concerns of these companies, Tan Sri Samsudin Osman,
Chief Secretary to the Government, said the Government was committed to
the masterplan and suggested that suppliers would have to follow its lead.

He was speaking at the launch of the Open Source Competency Centre
(OSCC) that would serve as the focal point of all OSS-related activities
in the country, and also part of the masterplan.

The centre would be "the main reference point, the pulse that drives
(the Government's) OSS implementation," he added.

The masterplan's near-term targets that might have an immediate impact
on public sector suppliers include having 60% of all new servers able to
run OSS operating systems, 30% of office infrastructure -- like e-mail,
DNS, proxy servers -- on OSS, and 20% of school computer labs to have
OSS applications such as productivity suites installed.

All this must be done by next year.

The masterplan, which was developed by the Government IT and Internet
Committee (GITIC), was approved in February and is now being implemented.



Share and share alike

The OSCC, operational since June 1, has several core functions,
including maintaining a repository or "knowledge bank" for all OSS
information and news, and to serve as a platform for sharing and
collaboration.

The centre will also coordinate OSS training and certification
programmes for the public sector, conduct R&D with institutions of
higher learning, and undertake promotional and awareness activities.

Samsudin said the centre would also serve as the hub for a local OSS
community comprising nine institutions of higher learning, the National
Institute of Public Administration (Intan) and Multimedia Development
Corporation to drive activities at the national level.

Datin Paduka Nazariah Mohd Khalid, Director-General of the Malaysian
Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu), said
the centre was a significant effort "to enhance service quality and
efficiency in the public sector."

Currently, a total of 54 government agencies are using OSS, mostly
applications such browsers, e-mail clients, file and print servers,
firewalls, domain name servers and applications servers, she said.

Only 10% were using OSS desktop applications such as productivity suites
and operating systems, she added.

The users comprise 14 ministries, 14 federal departments, 16 statutory
bodies and 10 agencies at State-level.

Nazariah also said that a recent survey conducted among government
agencies showed that there were many areas in which OSS use could be
enhanced.

"The results of the survey were very encouraging," she said, adding that
feedback from the 33 agencies that participated showed many were keen to
explore OSS use further.

The agencies identified over 200 instances in which OSS use could be
intensified. These included applications development, distributed
enterprise implementation, infrastructure use, high-performance
computing, desktop use, and workload consolidation.

"This showed that there was a need to quickly make available technical
training and assistance to enhance OSS expertise in the public sector,"
said Nazariah.

"The development of the OSCC is therefore timely."

She added that in the one month since it became operational, the centre
has trained 54 public sector employees, while more than 160 have
registered to use its knowledge bank.

"I'm confident that the number will increase after this," said Nazariah.


--
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:james.love@cptech.org
tel. +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040