The Power of Budget Dust

The recent Government Open Source CONference (GOSCON) in Portland displayed a level of enthusiasm for open source solutions in government which should serve as a model among bureaucrats world-wide. Among the most innovative of government information technology officers, they work in a wide range of both public service and internal operations — HR, public health, natural resource management, defense and more. Collectively, they have pushed OSS onto the center stage of information services in government.

Chief among their reasons for promoting OSS have been control, cost, and efficacy. For some information officers, essential projects could not have been accomplished if their department had been forced to wait for vendors to demonstrate interest or to be responsive to their needs. For others, their agency budgets were not large enough to cover new projects, despite a mandate to implement specific programs. The reality everywhere is that few departments have the all the resources they need to maintain their operational systems as well as to modernize them. But by using OSS, they found they could accomplish their mission, make use of modern technologies, and at the same time, save money and free themselves from excessive dependency on vendors.

Admittedly, the attendees at GOSCON were a self selecting group of Linux and open source enthusiasts. But their enthusiasm demonstrates what can be accomplished by putting open source in the right hands. The proactive application of OSS can break the cycle of red-tape and budget limitations. Instead of wasting time, the same effort can be re-focused on accomplishing the job required. Sometimes the results are dramatic. According to Bill Welty, CIO of the California Air Resources Board, who spoke at the conference, his department’s budget for software is so low, it runs on “budget dust.” Nonetheless, “the Air Resources Board has saved over $500,000 in products and licenses by shifting to open source products.” The board explains that “since the early 1990’s, it has adopted open source as a development tool in building systems, where feasible. These applications have included databases, interactive forms, networking and Internet services.”

The longer term side effects of inserting OSS solutions into the normal business processes of government, however, may be more important than the benefits accrued from the success of any particular project. Deployment of OSS spurs healthy competition within the entire government information industry. The results are lower prices for similar work across the board where vendors compete to demonstrate greater responsiveness by applying a richer repertoire of solutions. For example, if an organization can practically build a solution to meet its own needs with only a small investment of “budget dust”, then so can their vendors! In a healthy government services industry the true price of competitive solutions must be measured by cost of the effort required. There should be minimal overhead in the form of rent checks for licenses and royalties or bills for overpriced consulting labor. Inflated prices do not contribute to the cost-effectiveness of the operation of government nor to the public good. OSS has a vital role to play in restoring sanity to a government information services process that will provide practical solutions today and serve as a model for healthy competition in the future.