First the Australian govt puts together a Guide for open source as indicated here now another Govt body "Birmingham City Council" is planning to carry out large scale trials to evaluate open source software on its desktop pcs.

According to the article in Computer Weekly, The council has secured government funding to run 1,500 PCs using the Linux operating system with Openoffice applications and Firefox web browsers. The open source trial will include public-facing PCs in libraries as well as those used to access core systems in council offices.

Glyn Evans, director of business solutions and IT at the council, said he was keeping an open mind going into the trials. "I don't have any desire to use open source just because it is not Microsoft," he said.

The trial will last a year, and there will be an independent evaluation at the end. "We will measure costs, both initial and ongoing. We will look at the costs of retraining end users and IT staff," said Evans.

"Productivity will also be measured -- does open source technology make people more or less productive? We will also look at integration costs. Overall we want to find out if there is a sound business case for the open source desktop."

Meanwhile, 60% of councils questioned thought their use of open source software would increase over the next three years.Evans said there was growing interest in open source in local government. "Even if we did not have funding for this desktop evaluation project we would be looking at open source in the back office," he added.

Prashanth Rai