Open Source and the Feds; Your Tax Dollars at Work

According to the results of a report designed to identify current open source adoption rates and trends in the Federal government and undertaken by the Federal Open Source Alliance, the Feds seem to have a growing appetite of and appreciation for open source.

Based on a survey of Department of Defense (DoD), Federal civilian, and Intelligence IT executives, the study entitled "Federal Open Source Referendum" indicates that Federal open source implementers and non-implementers have different perceptions of the benefits and challenges associated with deploying open source, most notably around security issues. Agencies that have implemented open source say that advanced security is the biggest benefit -- 30 percent cite access to advanced and multi-leveled security capabilities as the top benefit -- while those which have not implemented cite security as a top challenge -- 40 percent.

Those that have adopted open source go on to identify other key open source benefits, including data center consolidation (17 percent), the ability to customize applications (17 percent), and the ability to facilitate cross-system or cross-agency application/process sharing (12 percent). Only 9 percent of Feds implementing open source cite cost savings as the primary benefit.

Some 55 percent of respondents note that they have been or are involved in open source implementations and 90 percent of those respondents assert that the deployment has benefited their agency. Drilling down, 97 percent of Feds -- Federal civilian, DoD, and Intelligence -- characterize their open source deployments as successful or partially successful. Only three percent of Federal civilian and DoD respondents respectively consider their deployments failures.

Overall, 90 percent of open source respondents who have adopted open source assert that their agency derives value from it. 29 percent of the respondents who have not implemented open source say that they plan to implement it in the next six to 12 months, with the Intelligence community leading the way.

The study (available at www.federalopensourcealliance.com) is based on an online survey of 218 Federal civilian, DoD, and Intelligence agency IT decision makers. The Federal Open Source Alliance is supported by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Red Hat.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:39 AM  Permalink