Open Source

Oracle channel partners are gearing up for a mega software and shared services framework worth up to £750m over three years via the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

A Prior Information Notice was released last week and covers the upgrade of ERP platforms including business intelligence and enterprise data warehousing, as well as services such as maintenance and hosting.

The FCO said that it intends to put together a sales agreement for the "provision of Oracle ERP development, delivery and support services" for its users and others across central government.

The Cabinet Office has pledged to consider smaller, more innovative companies when looking at government IT spending in the future, following a National Audit Office (NAO) report which claims Whitehall is making "a good start" at saving money. The government claims that last year it saved £410m on its ICT spend, and is set to save a further £200m by the end of March this year.

The British government plans to continue to work on the equality of free software within public procurement. All authorities will be migrated to the open platform gov.uk and will perform all government transactions digitally. The open source portal of the European Commission reported that the British coalition government announced in its mid-term report that it will continue to heavily rely on free software.