"Our objective is not to have a target for the use of open source in government, our objective is not to have a year on year increase, our objective is to best exploit the opportunities that are out there," he said.
It was 'Don't ask, don't tell,'" says Tony M. Stanco Tony M. Stanco, founding director of the Center of Open Source & Government, a policy think tank.
Several nations have already mandated the use of Open Source in government agencies, as for instance in Brazil and South Africa.
Before coming to government, the Conservative party called for an increased use of open source technology in government IT systems.
Today US CIO Tony Scott released a blog post outlining the Obama administration's plans to bring open source to the government too.
The coalition government says that it will "create a level playing field" for open source software in government projects, and split large computing projects into smaller ones - which will give smaller companies a better chance to compete in tenders.
In March 2011, it released the results of its investigation in a report, Open Standards and Open Source Software in Government.
Osborne said: "We have led the debate on using open source software in government, and I'm delighted that Dr Mark Thompson has come forward with these detailed recommendations.
There's a surprising amount of open source software in government already, and there isn't an open source alternative for much of the proprietary software used, so that's hugely ambitious".
There has been a lot of noise about increasing the use of open source technology in government, but there is little difference between what has been advocated by the Conservatives and existing policy.
