Open source ‘too costly’ for Irish e-gov

Register story:

“E-government in Ireland will be built using open standards technology, which may not be open source software such as Linux, Ireland’s e-minister Mary Hanafin has confirmed. Speaking at the Irish Software Association’s 16th annual conference, sponsored by Microsoft, O’Donnell Sweeney and ACT Venture Capital, minister Hanafin gave a brief overview of the state of Ireland’s e-government plans and said that an update to the government’s ICT strategy document “New Connections” would be published before May.

“The use of open standards is critical to the government’s plans,” she said. “But it is important to remember that open standards are not the same as open source.” Minister Hanafin indicated that Ireland’s e-government system, once fully constructed, needs to last for several decades and must therefore be upgradeable. “Using open standards gives us that option.”

She added that the government had looked into the long-term cost of various architectures and had determined that using only open source software could, in the long run, be more expensive. “The long-term cost of open source may outweigh the short term savings,” she said”.

Bet this is based on a report by one of the big consulting firms. It would be interesting to see it. Not that I don’t have faith in big consulting firms, of course. ;-) Must do some digging. Wonder if Karlin Lillington knows….