Policy : Open Source Software, 28 October 2004

The key decisions of this policy are as follows:

• UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT
procurements. Contracts will be awarded on a value for money basis.

• UK Government will only use products for interoperability that support open
standards and specifications in all future IT developments.

• UK Government will seek to avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services.

• UK Government will consider obtaining full rights to bespoke software code or
customisations of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software it procures
wherever this achieves best value for money.

• Publicly funded R&D projects which aim to produce software outputs shall specify
a proposed software exploitation route at the start of the project. At the
completion of the project, the software shall be exploited either commercially or
within an academic community or as OSS.2

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Background : Tories would decentralise state information, says David Cameron, 4 April 2008

Tory leader David Cameron has said that the Conservatives would avoid large-scale central IT systems such as the NHS National Programme for IT.

Cameron also praised open-source development, saying it would help smaller companies grow.

“We will follow private sector best practice which is to introduce open standards that enables IT contracts to be split up into modular components," he said.

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