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Government IT and Software Procurement

I understand the nature of ongoing contractual relationships. All that I can say is that because we do not want lock-in or citizens to be left with sub-optimal solutions, it is up to the people contracting to ensure that that does not happen. I think that we are far more sophisticated about that than we used to be. Our absolute insistence on open standards makes it far less likely that we will end up in a situation like the one the hon. Gentleman attempted to describe in his intervention. I go back to my challenge to open source providers to work with IT services firms, so that they can integrate open source into the solutions they supply when they contract with the Government. That is already happening in many cases, and we are using open source—I have given examples of that—but I would like it to happen more. On our side, John Suffolk, the Government's Chief Information Officer, will work with the industry and with departmental CIOs to help ensure that our open source policy is innovatively applied throughout the supply chain and in the future. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution to today's debate, for securing the debate and for his interest in the subject. I think that we share the same goal of ensuring that we have the best possible and healthiest mix of competition and innovation in the UK Government's procurement of IT software in an increasingly sophisticated environment, in order to ensure that services to citizens are modernised in the way that I have described. I hope that I have explained that we are committed to exploring the ways in which open source software can help us to achieve that, and to using such software where it is appropriate to do so. We are committed to offering a level playing field, and we will make case-by-case decisions about which of the solutions presented to us in any procurement win. I want to challenge open source software providers to show us what they have to offer and what they can do, so that we can ensure a far greater mix of solutions, far greater competition and more innovation in the way in which we procure software, in order to give citizens modernised access to Government services.