Govt begins OSS migration

By Dave Glazier for SITA

Johannesburg, 28 Aug 2006

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) unveiled its open source software (OSS) migration strategy in Pretoria on Friday.

The government's push for OSS migration was highlighted at the event, as State IT Agency (SITA) CTO Daniel Mashao commented that OSS migration is one of SITA's key deliverables for 2006, and is gaining momentum in government.

"SITA's involvement is two-fold," he stated. "To assist, but also to gain experience that it will use in the next migrations, such as the ones in the Department of Home Affairs and the Northwest Provincial Department of Finance.

"I want to alert all that there will be challenges and obstacles in the migrations, but our job is to minimise these for our clients."

He listed the core reasons for state OSS migration as:

* Reducing government's ICT costs
* Improving the efficiency of government services
* Encouraging competition
* Ensuring a lack of funds will not prohibit knowledge
* Contributing to black economic empowerment growth
* Helping to set standards that are truly open
* Militating against the "embrace and extend" philosophy of proprietary companies
* Developing local ICT skills

In February, eight companies were selected for the "OSS solutions for workstations" tender, believed to be the largest OSS tender in SA.

It is understood that any one of Business Connexion, Choice Technologies, IBM, GijimaAst, ImpiLinux, Novell, Obsidian and SourceCom will be used for OSS migration projects within government departments over the coming months and years.

Details are not known about the total cost or time frame of the migration project.