The administration of the Dutch city of Apeldoorn is considering the re-use of a data distribution system built as open source by the city of Rotterdam. Apeldoorn would be the second major municipality, after The Hague, to adopt this open source system. The switch to open source will result in a major reduction of costs and helps the city to battle against IT vendor lock-in, explained Apeldoorn's IT architect, Lex de Wolff.
IT vendor lock-in is causing increasing frustration in Dutch municipalities, it appeared at Red Hat's Open Source Conference in Amsterdam on Friday. Efforts by the national government efforts to develop a standards-based system are not working, De Wolff said. "These are not yet real standards. Vendors talk about and use different versions." The resulting IT vendor lock-in is expensive: "Staying with the usual proprietary IT vendors, means that prices will rise 20 to 25 per cent per year."
In Amsterdam IT architect De Wolff talked about the city's successful move to JBoss enterprise service bus, an open source Java application server, replacing a proprietary alternative. "Using and managing the system is the same. But our licence costs fell by 85 per cent. The money we spent on the migration was earned back within six months."
Next steps
Moving to Rotterdam's data distribution system would be a second major open source step, explained De Wolff. A third opportunity would be to migrate to an open source database management system. It would mean completely phasing out the ubiquitous proprietary database management system. This presents Apeldoorn with a "significant savings opportunity - we now pay over a euro per year per citizen in database licences".
De Wolff's remarks got backing from an attending representative of the city of Gouda. "We are considering the open source Postgresql, to avoid the monopolistic cost of the proprietary database system."
De Wolff responded that the proprietary IT vendor providing Apeldoorn with tools to link the municipal personal records database system with proprietary office applications, is not cooperating. "They threaten us that it will invalidate their warranty. They are also withholding the specifications, to stay ahead of the competition."
Apeldoorn's considering of open source alternatives is part of a cost savings program, including a reorganisation of the city administration. Over the five years, the municipal plans to reduce the number of full-time equivalent jobs by two hundred to 1200 FTE, he said.
More information:
Item on the open source co-operation between Rotterdam and The Hague (in Dutch)