South Africa Recommits to Open Source

Today the South African Cabinet issued a new policy for technology in government, deepening its commitment to open source and open standards.

In its statement, the Cabinet said: "All new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards, and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS."

Smartly, the South African government avoided setting any timetables or quotas. Instead, it focused on the benefits that open technologies afford the government and the country: lowering costs (for agencies, schools, communities and homes), enhancing IT skills and streamlining local software development.

It will also establish a project management office dedicated to implementing its new policy and expanding adoption of open source across government.

The government-wide move on open ICT follows quickly on the heels of a a decision by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to adopt the open document format (ODF) as its default document format.


Categories: OpenSource, SouthAfrica, government