The new government of Spain's autonomous region of Extremadura is not about to make a u-turn on its use of free and open source software, says Teodomiro Cayetano López, Director General de Administración electrónica y Evaluación.
Cayetano López, on behalf of the new government of the region, earlier this week answered to emailed questions about changes to the IT approach of Extremadura. The region is one of Europe's most well-known examples of a public administration using this type of software.
Free software supporters fear the region will overhaul its open source IT strategy, following remarks made by the newly elected vice president and minister of Employment and Innovation, Cristina Teniente. In a speech to attendees of a regional IT conference on 3 November, the vice president said the new government would consider the best IT solutions, whether or not based on open source.
Yet, according to CIO Cayetano López, advocates of free and open source software in the region's public administration "don't have to worry".
"The main difference between us and our predecessors is that we are going to take the decisions we consider better for the future of our land, but without deceiving the people."
Asked what the new government will do to prevent being locked-in by proprietary software vendors, Cayetano López explained the IT department will make sure that an exit strategy is part of contracts with software providers.
'Just marketing'
Extremaduda's CIO says that the previous government of Extremadura spent large sums of money to promote free and open source software, yet based its large IT systems on proprietary solutions. "The main information systems for health, human resources or financial management of the government were contracted and developed on propietary software including SAP, Oracle and .Net."
Those in favour of open source never protested the use of proprietary software for these systems, he added.
(The) "public funds which have been destinated to the promotion of the free software, inside and outside Extremadura, (...) have not given us any kind of additional value. Everything has been just marketing."
According to Cayetano López, the previous government had in 2006 decided in vain to move all the desktop PCs to open source, a transition to be completed within one year. "It was an arrangement of the Government Council and no one responsable for IT ever did it."
Up until now, all desktop PCs in Extremadura are running a proprietary system, says the IT manager. "And the regional administration has been paying for a local distribution of Linux, called Linex, which the government never used."
'Bad business'
"The previous Government of Extremadura has been doing a very good marketing campaign about free software but, in fact, they never decided to put into action the measures they were publishing. The new Government of Extremadura is going to take decisions is a serious way, trying to improve the situation of the local IT companies of Extremadura and (without) imposing the kind of software solution it needs."
IT Director Cayetano López did not specify the costs or cost-benefits of free and open source software. "Figures are in the regional budget of the last eight years. But if you visit any office of the regional government, you will realize that all our information systems, both clients and servers, are (based) on propietary software. If the government were a company, (it would be) a very bad business. We did not (get) the return on investment that we expected."
The comments by the IT director are in stark contrast with the numbers from a study by the previous administration, published in May this year. According to these numbers nearly 67 percent of all applications in use by regional public administrations are based on open source. The report also says that the past few years almost all applications developed for the regional administration are made available as open source.
More information:
References to a new IT approach, in a statement by the Vice Precident of the Government of Extremadura on 3 November 2011 (in Spanish)
El Mundo news item (in Spanish)
Earlier news item
Extremadura government item on the May 2011 study on free and open source software in the region (in Spanish)