The Dutch province Groningen is considering to migrate to Open Office, it announced this week. The province plans not to renew its current licence for Microsoft Office, which ends on January 1, 2009.
This licence allows the provincial government to continue to use Microsoft Office for three to four years. Groningen wants to use the money saved on these licences, about 50 thousand euro per year, to pay for the migration to Open Office. Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands, is the first of the twelve Dutch provinces to consider Open Office, an Open Source suite of office applications.
The migration plan is copied from the city with the same name, which decided to switch to Open Office last year. "Half of the money saved will pay for introducing Open Office, the other half will be reserved in case we decide later to purchase new licences for Microsoft Office", explains the province in its plan, published on its website this week.
Using Open Office is a good way to find out what the impact is of Open Source software on the organisation and what it means for IT management, says Peter Millenaar, one of the provincial IT workers responsible for the plan. "The use of Open Source software in public government will increase, no matter what."
Groningen also decided that where possible, it will give preference to Open Source software in new IT projects. Next to using Open Office on desktop PCs, the province says adequate Open Source software alternatives are available for relational database management systems, geographic information systems, reporting tools and IT help desk software.
Using Open Source software will mean less money spent on licences and increase the support for local IT service providers. The province thinks this will stimulate regional innovative industries. "Buying American software will mainly support the American software industry", the province quotes a 2004 report by SEO Economic Research, a Dutch economic research institute.
The migration plans need to be approved in September by the provincial representatives. The provincial government however expects no objections.
Punch card
The provincial plans surprise the Dutch project Ososs, which stimulates governmental organisations to use Open Source software. Last year the project focused on city governments, and it is about to start working on provincial governments.
"It is great to see them take the lead on this", says Ososs programme manager Jan Willem Broekema. "We can all sum up reasons not to use Open Source, for organisations are afraid of change. It is interesting to see the province decides to break this pattern." Migrating to Open Office should be easy, he says. "After all, we also progressed from using punch cards and Word Star."
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