451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
A sad state of affairs: open source in the UK
Matthew Aslett, February 13, 2008 @ 7:02 am ETI stated yesterday that open source had not been widely adopted in the UK without really backing the statement up. Fortunately SiriusIT, the UK-based open source services firm, has revamped its site with a blog entry explaining the situation with the example of open source adoption in the schools sector.
“The ICT procurement framework for schools was introduced with the best of intentions. Becta, a Government quango, sought to bring structure to the school ICT sector…
“The events described had the effect of introducing extreme conservatism in the education sector. This had an important consequence. The ability to adapt to change was severely curtailed and development was placed under the control of distant third parties. At first this did not appear obvious nor did it seem a problem…
“Becta’s procurement framework mean that alternatives that could meet schools’ needs in terms of energy consumption, extending life of equipment, eliminating licence costs and taking advantage of new technologies such as the ultra portable low-cost laptops are not possible.”
As Glyn Moody notes: “The frightening thing is that exactly the same situation obtains in the world of government IT in the UK. It’s a systemic failing that is holding back open source uptake in this country, with huge knock on effects in terms of costs and failed implementations.
As I told Computerworld: “Although there are isolated examples of local governments taking a lead on exploring the benefits of open source - such as Birmingham and Bristol - central government has pursued a policy of theoretically considering open source alongside proprietary software, while entering into framework agreements with the likes of Microsoft and Oracle.”
The extent of the problem was revealed by this week’s publication of Alfresco’s Open Source Barometer. The survey of Alfresco’s community suggests that the UK is behind the USA, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy in terms of open source adoption. Why would this be? Certainly the procurement frameworks are a barrier to adoption in the public sector, but what is holding the UK’s private sector back.
To some extent I believe the problem lies in a lack of an identifiable national IT industry. Germany has Siemens and SAP and had SUSE Linux (which remains more popular in Germany than Red Hat), France has Mandriva and Objectweb and AtosOrigin (and for better or worse Bull has stayed afloat thanks to its contracts with the French government and businesses).
The UK now has Alfresco of course, and in the business software sector Sage and Misys, but ask the man on the street to name a British technology entrepreneur and the best you can probably hope for as a response is Alan Sugar or Clive Sinclair. Thanks to the lack of a language barrier and the UK’s lack of enterprise it is all too easy for US technology vendors to dominate in the UK.
As to what can be done about it, raising awareness of the potential benefits of open source would help. Organizations like Alfresco and SiriusIT are doing what they can, while Becta’s reporting of Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading and its recent promise to do more to promote the use of open source software within schools and colleges indicates that perhaps the tide is beginning to turn.
On the other hand, it has been nearly three years since a Becta report indicated that open source software could produce considerable cost savings for UK schools and Becta has only recently said that it will explore ways in which it can help open source suppliers participate in its framework agreements. Additionally Becta is only responsible for the education sector.
While organizations like the Open Source Academy have supported existing open source projects what the UK lacks is a driving force providing the momentum for more widespread adoption. Who will step up to the challenge?
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[…] 451 CAOS Theory - A blog for the enterprise open source community wrote an interesting post today on A sad state of affairs: open source in the UKHere’s a quick excerpt I stated yesterday that open source had not been widely adopted in the UK without really backing the statement up. Fortunately SiriusIT, the UK-based open source services firm, has revamped its site with a blog entry explaining the situation with the example of open source adoption in the schools sector. “The ICT procurement framework for schools was introduced with the best of intentions. Becta, a Government quango, sought to bring structure to the school ICT sector… The events described had […]
I do understand that OSS adoption is held back in certain UK sectors but education is a bad example. SiriusIT describe Becta’s procurement barrers correctly, however they fail to add that in some cases they have been circumvented and where this has happened, adoption of OSS in UK education is phenomenally successful.
One of the key targets in UK educational ICT has been set by the Dept for Education and Skills, which dictates that by 2010 every school should have a learning platform. There is a major software procurement rush taking place right now as evidenced by the buzz at recent BETT and Learning Technology shows in London. Becta have a set of approved proprietary suppliers for learning platforms, however schools can choose thir own if they wish, and many schools and local education authorites have done just that. And many have chosen the open source route with a learning platform called Moodle. BESA run an annual UK schools technology survey which shows that in 2007 Moodle became the NUMBER ONE learning platform in secondary schools ahead of established players like Kaleidos and Learning Gateway, and third ranking in primary schools, just behind Digital Brain and MyGrid4Learning. Back in 2006 BESA also found that Moodle was installed in a whopping 56% of UK Further Education institutions. The Open University, the UK’s biggest distance learning platform by a long shot, migrated 180,000 students to a customised Moodle. Learndirect, a major government lifelong learning initiative, are also working on a customised Moodle. These numbers show that open source adoption in UK Education is hugely successful and that the learning platforms market has not only been disrupted by open source but that open source has overtaken the proprietary vendors to become THE dominant player. This is not a sad state of affairs, this is a world leading open source case study!
Thanks for the insight Mark, you are right of course that schools can choose their own software if they wish, I should have mentioned that. You are also right about Moodle being an incredible success, but isn’t it the exception rather than the rule? Would adoption of Moodle not be even higher if it were actually included in the framework agreement?
No. Education is still an excellent example.
You are entirely correct about Moodle, including the 56% figure from the superb OSSWatch. This does not negate our point however.
Moodle’s outstanding success is *despite* BECTA - their closed-shop procurement frameworks do not specify a single Moodle vendor and even excludes Moodle itself. It is fine to buy a poor quality, bizarrely designed, semi-broken proprietary VLE from BECTA’s good friends RM, but you can’t, under the ‘procurement guidelines’, get the market leader!
The Moodle case illustrates *perfectly* just how far out of touch with reality BECTA are, and how unfair their guidelines are - it is the exception that proves the rule…
BECTA will, and do, claim that Schools, Grids for Learning and LAs are free to ignore the guidelines, but it is only in exceptional circumstances (like Moodle) that they will. We are also now seeing LAs procurement people *insisting* on organisations sticking to them! In an increasing number of cases this is leading to *existing* Open Source deployments being dismantled and support arrangements discontinued. All very good for lining the pockets of BECTA’s proprietary friends, but extremely bad news for Open Source companies working in the Public Sector.
The net result is *exactly* what UK Government/Public Sector IT looks like -
Corrupt
Overpriced (by Billions)
Broken
Falling behind the rest of the world
With you and me, the taxpayers, paying for it…
I agree about the hideous state of procurement practices and that Moodle has become dominant *despite* Becta. The procurement frameworks absolutely need to change. I do remember seeing a parliamentary motion proposed by an MP to try to get the closed-shop Becta framework opened up, I am not sure what the status is of this. I also recently saw a Becta communication that signalled they may open up the framework but it fell far short of any concrete proposals or dates.
However for all the procurement problems, I just don’t buy that open source is in a sad state of affairs when it comes to education. The procurement barriers certainly are sad, and when they are changed the market wil open up tremendously. But my point really is that I think Education is a fantastic case study where Open Source has disrupted a market *despite* major barriers in its way. There is a groundswell of support for OS in the education community, and it’s not just about Moodle - look at all the OS work being funded by JISC for example. Maybe not as high profile as Moodle but there is a major grass roots campaign taking place, growing strongly from the bottom up despite the major barriers to top-down procurement.
I guess that I just see a lot of really good things going on in the educational OS community in this country. While there are problems as you describe, I don’t think the orignal post gave a balanced view, there is loads of good work going on by OS developers and evangelists in the UK education community, and people need to know that the news is not all bad!
Ok, I got it…
I think we are in *full* agreement.
I very much like your point about JISC too.
FYI, we are doing a three-way conference between OSSWatch (now expanded to be responsible for JISC’s entire Open Source policy), OSC and Red Hat in Oxford on 19th March.
We very much agree that everyone should know that not *all* news is bad. It is an unfortunate fact that it is *much* easier to get press coverage for the negative stuff than the positive however…
Mark
Fair point, it was something of a negative rant, and it is important to also highlight the positive moves that are taking place despite the barriers in this country. Thanks for doing so.
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As a Californian who has worked in the U.K. and Germany, I had the impression that there was more of an urge in the U.K. to align oneself with established power. In the U.S. there’s a common saying “you can’t find city hall”, meaning that there’s no use struggling against established power. I think that sentiment is even stronger in Britain, and I am guessing it is another byproduct of a more class conscious society there. Anyway, big proprietary software companies like Microsoft might be seen in this light as comforting bastions of money, power and predictability. I could imagine that for a typical British manager (I’m going out on a limb here), getting completely in bed with Microsoft is implicitly becoming part of an established, well moneyed, respectable “class”. By extension one can then look down one’s nose at the unwashed who are not part of the same class. I could be all wrong about this, but those are my hunches, if it helps.
“I could imagine that for a typical British manager (I’m going out on a limb here), getting completely in bed with Microsoft is implicitly becoming part of an established, well moneyed, respectable “class”.”
Whilst I appreciate this sentiment it is an outdated British stereotype - tea, crumpets and cucumber sandwiches.
The ‘Establishment’ is in decline and has been replaced by what Peter Oborn calls the ‘Political Class’ (The Triumph of the Political Class, 2007).
After 10 years of Blair, the emphasis is now less about aligning ones self with the established classes (i.e. the safest pair of hands) and more who’s got the most money and power, and how can I restructure society to further their interests.
To my mind, the UK public sector’s interaction with technology corporates reflects this more sinister sentiment.
I work in local government and I would say that Cole’s comment is not far off the money. The attitude is that no one will be sacked for buying Microsoft, just as it used to be with IBM. We will not even implement 3rd party system solutions in areas that Microsoft have no comparable products. The IT management within local authority are still making decisions based on how things worked years ago. They have no comprehension of the requirements for modern IT structures - hence why data disks are sent through the post and laptops full of confidential information are stolen. Microsoft does not have a solution to these problems therefore the solution doesn’t exist.
This is the mindset of government IT managers.
dogStar may be right, my UX experience was almost 10 years ago (so I’ve missed the transition to the Political Class). One good/interestig thing, to be fair, is I had the impression too that Britain actually spawns a lot of heroic innovators. That is, lone individuals doing brilliant work. It’s curious that in the U.S., there’s a big myth of individualism, while most things are actually the result of bureaucratic processes and large research and development teams. The “lone hero” types seem more likely to pop up in the U.K. Where I suppose they often have their brilliance squashed by layers of mediocre managers. I guess that happens here too. Sigh.
I think two current debates help to illustrate why I don’t think this is an establishment issue (i.e. nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft, they’re the safest pair of hand etc.) but the result of a decade of societal transformation by a government hellbent on furthering the interesting of their powerful, affluent friends.
Debate No. 1: New Labour insist on furthering the interest of bio-tech companies despite the overwhelming majority of the public being opposed to ‘Frankenstein foods’.
Debate No. 2: Not so long ago nuclear power was seen by government as dangerous and uneconomic. Renewable energy was in vogue, if only as an aspiration. Now nuclear power has been positioned as the only means by which society can fill the impending energy gap, despite numerous studies still showing it to be dangerous and uneconomic.
In both debates those in the ascendancy (bio-tech and energy companies) are reviled by the public at large. They certainly are not seen as the safest pair of hands with which to bet our collective futures. The public are very much aware of the inherent dangers associated with the technologies they sell. Why then does the UK government insist on promoting them? Because they have money and power, much of which finds its origin in the US.
The same is true of Microsoft. Their technologies are a danger to the public good. Viruses, trojans, worms are almost exclusively a Microsoft problem. Exploitive licensing terms have actually robbed the public of their liberties. Why then has the UK government shaped public sector procurement to ensure Microsoft’s dominance? Its not because they can be trusted, but because they have the power and the money.
Corrupt, Overpriced (by Billions), Broken, Falling behind the rest of the world.
Yup, money is God.
The definition of an MP is somebody with an unfeasibly large house for their salary.
As a Scandinavian that have settled in the UK I can with absolute certainty state that the British class system is alive and kicking. The “Political Class” is a snappy book title but it still is the old class system. The ideals of Free and Open Source Software does not integrate easily in a country where the personal wealth of the Monark is the highest in the land. Places in the British Legislature is being sold and Ministers of Parliament where outraged when the police investigated the latest round of sales. Some protested that this was common knowledge and therefore the police should not cause the Oxford graduates in charge embarrassment by investigating. No sane person believes Tony Blair did not know about the sale of peerages for party donations. There is no donations to be had from the FOSS movement and no lucrative directorships either so it is going to be an uphill struggle to spread the good news. We shall prevail - off with their heads - long live the revolution:_)
Skog
We see the same in the US. I think part of the solution is to pick problems that are specific enough to the field (ie, education, government) that there’s enough customer demand (paying or otherwise) and passion to move them forward.
In the US, one prime example is how students are assigned to schools within a city.
There’s constant disagreements about policy and the implementations are fairly pitiful. Opening school assignment apps, algorithms, and (anonymized) data as open source would let outsiders participate, tweak, and maybe even mash it into other Web services.
[…] source visionary or opportunist? Matthew Aslett, April 3, 2008 @ 10:20 am ET Given my previous lamentations about the state of open source adoption in the UK, it is good to see David Cameron, leader of the […]