Written question asked by David Gauke (Conservative) on Monday, 22 January 2007, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 24 January 2007. It was answered by Adam Ingram (Labour) on Monday, 19 February 2007 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Open Source Software

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what percentage of his Department's computer systems use open source software; what percentage of the systems planned to be installed use such software; and whether he plans to increase the use of open source software in his Department.

Answer: The information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.The use of open source software across Government Departments is subject to guidance from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).All software is required to be evaluated and accredited before use on the Defence network. This includes an analysis of the security risk to IT systems, and would ensure that all technical countermeasures had been applied. Open source software products are unlikely to have been evaluated to the required extent and therefore the overall cost of evaluation, coupled with any lack of support contracts, may offset any benefit in reduced overall licensing costs to the MOD.None of the infrastructure systems currently supported by the Defence Communication Services Agency's Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) IPT, use open source software and there are no plans to replace such systems with open source products. Selection of the software underpinning the future Defence information infrastructure has been left in the hands of the DII Future(F) delivery partner, but currently there is no intention to make use of open source software.None of the bidders for the DII(F) contract was proposing an open source solution.

Secondary information