Conservatives press for open-source push

David Cameron has declared that a Conservative government would favour a greater use of open-source software.

In a speech to the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts on 3 April, the leader of the Conservative Party called for more open source and a less centralised approach to IT projects in government, apparently relating the two closely to each other.

"We will follow private-sector best practice, which is to introduce 'open standards' that enable IT contracts to be split up into modular components," he said. "So never again could there be projects like Labour's hubristic NHS supercomputer.

"And we will create a level playing field for open-source software in IT procurement and open up the procurement system to small and innovative companies."

A year ago the Conservative Party backed a study looking into the development of a procurement strategy to make open source more attractive to the public sector.

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In his blog, published on the party's website, Cameron said: "We'll champion open-source software, not big clunking mainframe solutions. No more NHS computers, much more open platform projects that can be broken down into their component parts."

Cameron also used the speech to say the public should have access to more non-sensitive government information to use in the development of new applications. He said the party already has policies on this, including a proposed bill to publish online "in an open and standardised format, every item of government expenditure over £25,000".

Although he did not refer to it during the speech, the approach is akin to that advocated by last year's Power of Information report commissioned by the Cabinet Office.