High exit costs are no excuse for public administrations to avoid migrating from proprietary applications to open source software and open standards, says the Dutch minister for Foreign Trade Frank Heemskerk.
"Open standards offer long term benefits, including interoperability and lower costs. At times a migration to such software can be tricky, but public administrations will be supported in these cases", the minister wrote in reply to questions regarding software procurement by the city of Utrecht.
The ministry last year developed the Dutch policy on open standards and open source, known as the 'Heemskerk action plan'. As part of this policy, Dutch public administrations need to provide explanations if they do not use open standards and if they decide against using open source software when making procurement decisions.
The city of Utrecht in December started procurement for the renewal of four thousand desktop PCs. Replacement is to take place in the next two to four years. One of the city's requirements is that the vendor should be able to supply licences for the Microsoft XP (OEM) operating system. The vendor should also be able to supply a "Linux distribution", the city wrote in the procurement documents.
The city was criticised by NOiV, the Dutch resource centre on open standards and open source. The centre helps public administrations in carrying out the Heemskerk action plan.
In a letter, NOiV in January said the city's procurement breaks the rules on procurement. These do not allow procuring specific brands. The city in February improved its documents, writing that in all cases a brand name was mentioned, comparable alternatives could also be offered.
However, a spokesperson for the city administration explained Utrecht is locked-in to the XP operating system. Migrating to an alternative such as Mac OS X or GNU/Linux is expensive and puts delivering the city's services at risk. "Migrating to Microsoft Vista would have similar consequences."
Asked to comment on the Utrecht procurement, trade ministry Heemskerk said public administrations could not offer costs as an reason not to migrate to alternatives. "If comparable open source solutions are available, these should be preferred. (Public administrations should not) select proprietary solutions just because they are cheaper."
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