“The agility and flexibility it brings users helps us get to mission accomplishment faster,” declares Robert Carey, Navy CIO.”

“It makes economic sense for the Army,” adds Terry Edwards CIO, Army Material Command.

“It really gives us control over our investments and really helps us in our procurement cycle,” explains Casey Coleman, GSA CIO.

The “it” these federal IT leaders are advocating is more use of Open Source Computing, the topic of the recent broadcast of the Federal Executive Forum on Federal News Radio.

CIOs Carey, Coleman and Edwards were joined on the panel by Andrew Gordon of Unisys and Paul Smith of Red Hat. Jim Flyzik of The Flyzik Group led the panel in a candid discussion of:
·         Open Source solutions in government

·         Benefits of Open Source approaches

·         Best practices and future growth

What is Open Source Computing?

According to the Open Source Initiative, “Open Source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of Open Source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.” (Learn more at www.opensource.org)

Closer to home, if Firefox is your Internet browser then you are using an Open Source application.  And currently your agency IT planners may be piloting, testing and proving concepts using Open Source tools and technologies without having to commit up front to a big procurement cost or to a particular vendor, saving the taxpayer and agencies both time and money.

Open Source Computing is also closely associated with the migration to Web 2.0. According to GSA’s Casey Coleman, with Open Source there is a participatory community contributing to the creation of a product, maintenance of standards and best practices.

“You have the same thing with Web 2.0 with wikis and blogs and community sites,” says Coleman. “The Internet itself is turning from a static informational entity to a participatory community based type of situation where you can contribute and put information on the Internet as opposed to gleaning information from it.”  More on Army/Navy Advocates Below

Forum panelists Robert Carey, Navy CIO and Terry Edwards, CIO, Army Material Command are also advocates of using Open Source, which provides agility and flexibility to their operations. During the Forum, they talk about the growing role Open Source Computing is playing.

“If we are going to push the envelope on capability for our Army,” says Edwards, “we’ve got to look at getting systems that give us the flexibility. I think Open Source gives us that environment to do that. There is no proprietary code or capability we need to worry about. It gives our developers and our researchers the opportunity to look at this and make changes to tailor those systems to meet our specifics.”

“Our desire to have open architectures and be able to interoperate with the Marine Corps and the Army at the same time with the same systems is infinitely important to us, especially in the global war on terror,” adds Navy CIO Carey. More on Benefits Below

Lower costs. Choice. Innovation. Complete application agility. These are just some of the benefits Unisys’ Andrew Gordon and Red Hat’s Paul Smith discuss during the Forum.

“Complete application agility is defined as a combination of open systems, open data formats and unrestricted access to the source,” says Unisys’ Gordon.

“What’s really going to leapfrog Open Source applications running on the desktop is Web-based collaboration and enterprise messaging and this is better known as Web 2.0.,” says Red Hat’s Smith. These tools include wikis, blogs, enterprise content management and instant messaging systems and web based office software.

“What you are really going to see in the next 2 to 5 years is dramatic productivity increases, complete elimination of process steps, and really workplace communication in the federal space will be really radically transformed,” forecasts Smith.

And in the Open Source world, flexibility, agility, rapid mission accomplishment are major benefits. You get control over IT investments and costs with more choice, better diagnostics, innovation and creativity summarizes Forum moderator Jim Flyzik.

Open Source Is Opening Closed Doors

Once Open Source software solutions were closed to government developers. Proprietary software ruled. But that was then. Today it's a different story as the benefits of Open Source solutions are evident to civlian and defense IT leaders. The result: Open Source solutions are becoming decidedly mainstream. Read More