Shortly after Belgium, and around the time that Norwaywent open source mad the Dutch government a resounding statement that it would go Open source too.
It was healthy reponse of policy makers against a government plan to spend 150 million on Microsoft software. Increasing Microsoft dependency, while Open Office was free and especially for access abilty in the future, much better. Open standards would become the default choice unless arguments could be made for another choice. Moreover, all government bodies were at the time required to send in a plan on how to implement it. Things looked bright..
Last week Dutch political parties started an investigation to combat still enormous IT expenditure, which according to the national calculation and planning agency is unneccesary high. Questions came, what happened with the 150 million Microsoft plan. Turns out, the plan still proceeded and actually more agreements were made with more binding barriers to open standards. Moreover, parties found out that the ambitious open standards plan was delivered 2 years late and was less substantial. After this news, the opposition immediately asked for a public question hour with government officials involved and provision of the agreement papers.
Then government unwisely decided not to play ball, and delay the debate by not providing the papers in time. In short: This is not an Open IT policy, it not even open government, we’re actually going backwards because of the government, regardless of the start of the Open standards plan!
I’m looking forward who the opposition can drag through the mud, since apparently only then the netherlands is really getting “Open”. For more information see also Kletskous.
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