Nigel McFarlane

Someone Else’s Changing Angst

Written by admin on April 28, 2009

The core issues of most government organisations have nothing to do with the growing pains of ICT. In the noble pursuit of profit those pains have, to date, been most directly digested by the private sector. This has provided the private sector with a leadership position, to which the public sector has turned for advice, or around which the public sector reactively forms user groups, steering committees and centers of competence. Only in government ICT research, a tiny proportion of all government activity, is any attempt made to directly engage with the bleeding edge of ICT that private sector suppliers have otherwise adopted as their problem.

This historical situation, however, is changing, particularly in the area of software. There are now a number of well-understood standard software building blocks: the desktop, databases, file systems, graphics and others. Many vertical niches in software, such as accounting packages, inventory management and word processors are also well understood. Overall, their number is inching forward rather than exploding. Even the relatively recent hypertext and hypermedia Web browser is now over ten years old. These days, software is a city of solutions, not a fresh field of virgin opportunity.

The advent of Open Source software is evidence of this software maturation. Such software duplicates the features of well-established and successful architectural elements, at lower cost. Supplier’s anxiety about technical leadership thus receives a double blow: such leadership is no longer predicated on past lucrative profit models; and such leadership no longer maintains a large information lead over buyers. Open Source software doesn’t eminate from private projects, so there are no sudden revelations.