Lundy critical on government purchasing model

When it came to ICT purchasing decisions, smart buyers were desperately needed within government, said Kate Lundy, Shadow Minister for IT.

Senator Lundy took the opportunity to slam the federal government's procurement policies during an address at the Open Source in Government conference, a mini conference of linux.conf.au. 'Smart buyers are what we desperately need in the public sector,' she said.

At the Adelaide conference, in a wide ranging speech on IT policy and industry development, Lundy said federal government had suffered 'subservience to the market' when it came to the procurement of ICT services and products.
'Australia has always been behind the eight-ball [in ICT],' Lundy said. 'Government has been more interested in the spectre of cost saving than anything else in ICT,' she said.

Lundy panned the government's former outsourcing clusters, which saw agencies group together and outsource to one provider. Lundy said in many cases the outsourcer owned the hardware, which increased vendor lock-in. 'This meant big implications for cost to get out of that contract,' she said.

According to Lundy, the break up of outsourcing clusters had seen NOIE morph into a more useful organisation as agencies had gained autonomy in their purchasing decisions.

On the use of open source, Lundy said the Opposition didn't support specific preference of open source, 'but it has to be a fair playing field, so open source can fairly compete'.
'Open source represents the greatest opportunities in IT. The manifestation of everything you can do... The democratisation of applications and software,' said Lundy.

'Open source market is not managed by proprietary interests, rather it is managed by peers. It's a different economic model of distribution. Nothing is going to stop the movement,' she said.

Lundy noted that many governments from around the world were investigating open source technology. 'It is only ill-informed, dumber countries that will prop up the old system, standing outside of a tidal wave of change,' she said. 'A smart purchasing model defies being captured by what the market wants,' she added.

Last year a rash of tenders came up for grabs as outsourcing clusters broke up.

Siobhan Chapman travelled to linux.conf.au in Adelaide as a guest of Sun Microsystems.