Government Affairs Alert
With Government Agencies trying to implement savings in
innovative ICT procurement, the increased utilisation of Open
Source, or indeed, replacing proprietary software with Open Source,
is a significant opportunity for customers.
The opportunity to use Open Source software also offers leverage
in the context of technology procurement.
In November 2003, the Brazilian government issued a policy
encouraging the use of Open Source. By 2005, 300,000 government
computers had switched from Microsoft to the Open Source operating
system: Linux. Three years later, 73% of large companies in Brazil
were using Open Source.1
The UK caught on in 2004, when the UK's Office of Government
Commerce described Open Source Software as "a viable and
credible alternative to proprietary software for infrastructure
implementations and for meeting the requirements of the majority of
desktop users...". 2 Now, in 2013, British
Government CTO Liam Maxwell expressed
