Prime Minister Puts Weight Behind Open Source Software Push [UK]

The Prime Minister's office has put its weight behind a drive to make the government's open source policy overcome the obstacles that have seen it flounder for the last two years.

Word of Prime Minister Cameron's intervention came as the Cabinet Office unveiled a raft of measures to designed to fulfil the coalition government's policy commitment to "create a level playing field for open source". The Cabinet Office is working on an open source reference stack, a software assessment model, a CIO training programme and an system to survey open source use in government and finger those departments who don't do enough.

"Number 10 are pushing this," Tariq Rashid, lead architect of the Home Office Technology and Solutions Assurance Team, told Computer Weekly.

Rashid, who was helping the Cabinet Office unearth the reasons why systems integrators have ignored the government's open source policy, said there had been more pressure from Number 10 over open source than there had been from the Cabinet Office, which was responsible for the policy.