Open Source Industry Australia

The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) recently announced it was conducting an independent review of the Australian Government's use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) seeking to identify how the Australian Government can strengthen its management of ICT and maximise the benefits of ICT for greater efficiency and delivery of Government services. The review is also examining Government ICT investments, including maintenance, intra-agency links, development and staffing.

Brendan Scott, Director of OSIA, made the following submission to the review.

Further information, including the terms of reference is available on the Government website: http://www.agimo.gov.au/government/ict_review

Download OSIA's full submission in PDF format: ICT Submission

In summary OSIA's reccomendations are:

In order to promote better procurement and use of ICT the government should:

(a) use open data formats (eg odf) for Government data that is intended to be retained for extended periods or used for interchange with the public. Recent developments at ISO indicate that ISO approval is not sufficient for a format to qualify as “open”;

(b) eliminate existing discrimination against FLOSS in its metrics, tender procedures and approaches to purchasing;

(c) have no closed source dependencies for the access to services or data – in particular no such dependencies should be present for regulatory, corporate or tax authorities or departments (eg ACCC, ASIC and ATO);

(d) interact with business and consumers on a technology neutral basis either through the use of established open standards, or on a very technologically conservative basis with an emphasis on documented, widely accessible and interoperable formats;

(e) maintain a publicly available portal detailing its use and contribution to FLOSS;

(f) discard existing metrics for innovation and implement metrics which measure the value of technology or the value to society as a whole of technology (taking into account additional costs or cost savings rather than simply on revenue or GDP). For more details see: http://brendanscott.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/tradegy­of­the­anti­ commons/;

(g) not discriminate against open source in Government tenders, Government purchasing or Government grants. Discrimination against open source includes specification of products rather than requirements, and specification of requirements which are an implicit specification of a product. Grant conditions should not discriminate against FLOSS commercialisation of outputs. Grants should be made preferentially for those projects which promote interoperability between Government and FLOSS operating systems;

(h) prefer technologies for which there are multiple providers/supporters which are not contracted to a single ultimate source for the supply of the technology over those which are;

(i) contribute to FLOSS development by adapting the existing payment system for copyright works to fund the development of the FLOSS industry. Such a system would involve voluntary payments based on usage of FLOSS to a collecting society specifically created for FLOSS, such money to be spent on FLOSS related industry development;

(j) commercialise publicly funded innovation under a FLOSS licence (although it may also be commercialised under other non­FLOSS licences). Publicly funded development should not be exclusively licensed;

(k) ensure that the acquisition by Government of software permits Government to freely redistribute that software to all citizens. Failing that, the Government should mandate in procurement of software that the Government can on­sell or on­supply copies of software it has acquired (including, but not limited to at the end of life of the software), and must be able to do so independent of any hardware acquired in conjunction with such the software. For example, if the Government acquires 10 copies of software, it must at a minimum be able to on­supply each of those 10 copies (possibly on the basis that it deletes that number of copies from its own system). Similarly, whole of Government contracts must permit each copy acquired under the contract to be on­supplied.

All of these things can be achieved over the medium to long term by a change in government action or by encouraging industry to voluntarily adopt licensing overlays on existing legislative entitlements. In each case this is without coercion of any industry participant.