My Department spent €359,932 on information technology software licences during 2002. The products of the company specified accounted for 55% of this expenditure. This represents a significant rise on previous years as, before now, we did not use their desktop software.
In respect of open source software, my Department has conducted some small scale pilots including Linux and Open Office. As a result, it judged that a switch away from the company specified was not feasible at this stage and we found that we needed to begin using the specified company's software on the desktop, taking into account inter-operability needs with colleague Departments and agencies, external agencies and members of the public and also the existence of support skills locally.
However, my Department is keeping a watching brief on developments in conjunction with the Department of Finance's centre for organisation, management and development, CMOD, and other Civil Service Departments and is aware of developments in some other jurisdictions and the potential benefit of alternative sources of software.
Should the situation arise that the Department can confidently expect to deliver its services using an alternative supplier of operating systems or desktop software my Department would have no issue in switching over to whichever set of products is most economically advantageous. It already has a strategic commitment to an alternative supplier of mail products and is currently deploying server technologies that will allow us greater choice of supplier in the medium term.
