Two days after the SA government revealed its much-anticipated commitment to open source software (OSS), the Government IT Officers` Council (GITOC) meets today to discuss a tool that addresses total cost of ownership (TCO) in OSS.
The tool was made available to GITOC by the State IT Agency (SITA). After deliberating on the tool, GITOC will advise government on its use, according to sources.
From an earlier study by the council, which highlighted the benefits and risks of OSS (16 January), it is expected that any eventual TCO finding will focus on the cost-effectiveness of OSS (no or limited licences are needed), its apparent security benefits, stability, openness (and hence widespread support) and other benefits, but also on the risks associated with deploying it.
The risks include the problem with managing deadlines in critical short-term projects, and from the report it would also seem that, for a project to merit the use of OSS, it should not have a narrow application, but be of general interest to the OSS community.
This follows remarks made in Parliament by Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, minister of Public Affairs and Administration. An open source news site, www.tectonic.co.za, published Fraser-Moleketi`s apparent support for OSS in the government, which further appeared to slight other (unnamed) operating environments.
"Responding to a question in Parliament this (Wednesday) afternoon," the site reports, "minister ... Fraser-Moleketi described in detail her department`s support for OSS in the delivery of public services. Fraser-Moleketi said OSS was already widely used by government and was 'part of a deliberate strategy aimed at generating widespread knowledge and understanding [of ICT]`."
Quoting from the 16 January report, the minister said: "OSS has recently emerged as a powerful way of generating knowledge as well as economic value ... and we are working on this quite extensively."
The study said the appropriate use of OSS by government "could yield significant advantages, not only in terms of greater efficiency of government operations but also in realising the potential conveniences for citizens, economic development and the contribution OSS could make to Nepad initiatives".
The minister also highlighted a number of areas in which the government had already realised the benefits of using OSS. "The Northern Cape Health Department has been considered one of the best in the use of OSS because they use all their applications in Linux. And ... I know with my own department today, our systems are down because of some problem in the system. We don`t see that in Northern Cape where they use open source."
Responding to follow-up questions regarding viruses and hacking, Fraser-Moleketi said OSS was seen as a more secure operating environment because the source code is freely available and can be analysed by a lot more people than proprietary software.
Fraser-Moleketi added that "the rest of Africa and the world are looking at some of the [OSS] initiatives we are involved in".
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