The London borough of Camden and the city of Bristol have launched the Open Systems Alliance, aiming to develop, share and re-use software solutions. The alliance was announced at the Open Source Open Standards Conference, in London last Thursday, by Camden's chief information officer, John Jackson. He is inviting other UK public administrations to join: "Let's work together to make our administrations digital by default, and open by design."
"The UK's public administrations are developing lots of software, why are we not sharing these? Let's start re-using our solutions", Jackson said. Several other councils have already expressed an interest in joining the alliance: "We will announce further partners in the weeks and months ahead.
Local authorities have common functions such as social care, housing and planning, Jackon explains. They share many of the same systems and they often face the same challenges. Despite this, most tend to operate in isolation, with minimal use of shared platforms and common processes. "ICT suppliers do little to unlock this, preferring instead to maximise revenues by selling solutions, developed and paid for by one council, to others."
Sharing and re-use
According to Camden's CIO, the UK's councils will increasingly deliver their services online, to achieve economies of scale and, by combining services, improve their outcomes. This includes moving to a service oriented architecture and open IT system. "By focussing on interoperability we encourage the integration and sharing of systems and councils."
Public administrations developing common web services and application programming interfaces (APIs), create opportunities for sharing and re-use, for example for validating an address, or for booking a meeting with an official. "The future of government is very different to the past."
At the conference in London, Jackson called on the UK's public administrations to help improve the country's IT market, which is hampered by a lack of competition. "Public administrations are spending billions on technology, with ICT suppliers offering expensive proprietary IT solutions and not sharing the innovations."
Digital strategy
He expects that sharing, re-use and open source solutions will allow the borough to cut costs. The city needs to reduce its IT costs by 150 million pounds (about 180 million euro) over the next four years. Achieving this will require new thinking and innovative open IT systems, the city CIO says. "That is why being open is a key pillar of Camden's Digital Strategy. This is on the top of our political agenda."
Camden is one of the city administrations involved in a new framework for IT procurement, developed with the UK's procurement services and the Local Government Association. "This framework, unlike the previous framework, places a focus on the importance of commitments and action to open systems, interoperability, provision of APIs, webservices and software development kits."
More information:
Open Source Open Standards Conference website
Camden's Digital Strategy
New procurement framework
Computerweekly news item
Computing interview with Camden's CIO John Jackson