Government prefers open source, says Maude

In a parliamentary written answer on 14 September 2010, the Cabinet Office minister said that even where there are no significant overall cost differences between open and proprietary products, open source will be selected "on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility". He said that is it difficult for the government to assess the possible savings from using open source software because "it is only one element in the overall solution". The admission appears to be a shift from the Conservative party's pre-election stance, which was not to assume that open source was always the right solution. Maude added: "Procurement decisions will be made on the basis of the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total cost of ownership of the solution." Last month the Guardian reported that Liam Maxwell, the Conservative councillor in charge of IT policy at Windsor and Maidenhead Council, said that the government needed to mandate the use of open standards in software to achieve real change. Maxwell co-authored a pre-election report on government IT for the Conservative Party. The document cited the possibility of using Microsoft HealthVault or Google Health as electronic health records rather than the Summary Care Record and said this would reduce the costs and give patients more control over their details.