OSICT

No, not the title of a "Sword and sorcery" book. BigWobber.nl is a campaign site set up by Dutch ICT journalist Brenno De Winter. The aim of the website is to publish information from the Dutch Government which has been released under their "WOB" freedom of information law (="Wet Openheid van Bestuur").

In 2008 the Dutch government brought in a law which required all governing bodies in the Netherlands to put together an action plan for the implementation of Open Standards. Since then Brenno de Winter has been researching the progress of this government action through the WOB law. On a recent edition of Radio Online Mr de Winter gave a summary of his findings.

His "gut feeling" is that the plan is working at a national but not at a local council level. Even though 75% of the Dutch councils claim to have a plan in place for the implementation of Open Standards only around 37% are actually working towards implementing such plans.

5% of councils are "very proactive" with their implementation of the plans while 4% claim to be implementing plans, but haven't changed their spending policies.

Reasons for not implementing the plans include:
1) the plan is seen as being imposed by Den Haag (i.e. the national government)
2) people are concerned about how to gain familiarity with the new software
3) ill will. Some respondents to the survey said that the plan would be implemented "over their dead body".

The government has made 14 million EUR available to draw up and implement the plans but Mr de Winter does not think that the money has achieved its goal.

Erik Gerritsen - the "Open Source Ambassador" for the Dutch ministry of economic affairs - spelled out the advantages of Open Source and Open Standards:
1) it saves money: no yearly licence fees for the many thousands of government employees
2) the organisations can "talk to each other"
3) departments can exchange information more easily. A series of mishandled child-care cases was cited as a reason why better information exchange was necessary between government agencies.

The cost of the research by Mr de Winter has been subsidised by "benefit" fundraising. When asked about supporting the research, Mr Gerritsen said it wasn't appropriate for taxpayer's funds to be used.

Brenno de Winter explained what was required to advance the plans to implement Open Source & Standard plans:
1) there must be more communication
2) ICT workers must explain the benefits of Open Source and Standards
3) there needs to be an individual to visit the councils