"Open source also comes with a range of less measurable costs – training, over-engineering, reliability, security maintenance, data interchange and interface complexity."

As opposed to assuming staff will just "know" Office etc* and be able to stumble along with Microsoft's next changes, under-engineering, MS <365, patch Tuesdays, proprietary "standards" and complexity**.

I think you make a convincing case for preferring FOSS to Microsoft.

If this Microsoft is the only viable option for public sector it is an excoriating condemnation of the public sector.

* Training costs saved here will become evident in CCed confidential data, Excel misused as a database with row limits overlooked and numerous other public sector ballsups traced back to lack of training.

** See stumbling along with Microsoft's next changes.

So the takeaway here is: “Yes, we’re spending £9 billion with Microsoft, but open source is scary and only technologists like it - so let’s just keep feeding the beast.” The whole piece reads like a press release for Redmond, with the usual “hidden costs” bogeyman rolled out to justify locking the public sector into one supplier until the end of time.

What it completely dodges is the real reason we’re in this position: UK government procurement has been systematically engineered to favour multinational, tax-shy mega-corps over domestic suppliers for decades. We’ve hollowed out our own IT sector by design - killing off in-house skills, burying SMEs under procurement bureaucracy, and making sure the only companies who can survive the tender process are the same global giants who can afford to wine and dine ministers.

And while we’re handing over billions, we’re also handing over sovereignty. Thanks to the US CLOUD Act, any public data sitting on Microsoft’s infrastructure is legally accessible to US authorities the moment they ask for it - no matter what “assurances” are on the contract. So not only are we exporting the money, we’re exporting the data too, and pretending it’s “value for money.”

Standardisation could mean interoperable, open systems that empower UK-based development - but in practice it means monoculture contracts that funnel billions offshore, place public data under foreign jurisdiction, and lock us into a dependency we’ll never escape. It’s not risk management, it’s market capture - and it’s been policy, not accident.

So many holes in this 'argument', but it's what I expect from those in charge in the public sector.

>> It is not that open source is not viable, but rather that the true costs often only come to light over time.

What a howler. I know it's Oracle, not MS, but... Birmingham City Council. Expected costs: £19 million. Not it looks like £130 million++.

The essence of the problem is that people like Jos Creese think they have achieved 'good value'.

Do ya really think they're going to admit "Oh shit, I fucked up big time" in public and risk their cushy jobs?

Stockholm syndrome at its finest.

"more accepted by staff who use the same software at home"

- circular argument: they use it at home because they are expected to use it at work (and they pay, directly or indirectly, for the home versions).

"public sector business leaders, accountable for and able to demonstrate return on investment, benefits realization, and UK public value for money"

- the polite response is that the voters will be sceptical on that assertion. ("Fell off chair laughing" would be the colloquial version.)

Lovely FUD! lovely FUD!

I would present my counter arguments, but those above are close enough.

> [...] the value that Microsoft brings indirectly, including [...] high levels of security and trust, [...] innovation such as AI [...]

Sir, I salute your bravery. That said, for the sake of your health, though, I advise you to stop reading this comments page. It will not go well.

Thinking of this from the point of the UK, who would presumably rather spend money helping UK people than USA people. Not that we're anti-American - I mean USA has NASA how cool is that? - but every country is supposed to prioritise its own people in resource allocation. So would you rather (a) give a billion to Microsoft for use of their software or (b) give the same billion to a bunch of UK developers to pay them to learn and improve the open source up to a professional standard.

Either way, you get software that does the job (if we assume "it's done right" in both cases of course). But with the second option, you also get a whole bunch of Brits that you've trained. Which can then be used either on that or on other projects. Whereas if you'd just given it to Microsoft, well, *their* engineers tend to be in Redmond.

There's precedent for this in Japan's KL-1 project, which was considered a failure in terms of the system it produced, but was still considered a success because of its immense value in giving training and experience to local Japanese engineers who could then go on to do other jobs in Japan. So maybe the UK needs a KL-1 like project, just try to make sure it actually ends up with a usable system as well this time as that would be a nice bonus right?

"*their* engineers tend to be in Redmond."

Are they? Not in India?

The public sector is generally lamentable at procuring anything much beyond paper clips - high speed railway lines, aircraft carriers, accommodation for migrants, face masks, large buildings, ...

Now, some of those things are exceptional and it wouldn't make sense maintaining the permanent capability within the public sector to deliver them when required. However, there is a constant ongoing requirement to replace hospitals and schools and railway signalling and roads and sewers and telecommunications and so on and while you wouldn't want every last person doing those things on the public payroll it seems really remiss not to have staff in the public sector who have sufficient expertise to commission, design and oversee the necessary projects. HS2 has largely been a fiasco as it was immediately put into the hands of a specially-created company and it appears no-one was left in government with the knowledge to keep it in check.

Why aren't we building enough houses? Because we're leaving it to the private sector. In the 1950s my father worked for the architects department of a county borough. Local authorities employed architects (and, indeed builders) and that was the only way the post-war governments could deliver the promised new schools, hospitals, libraries and public housing. There were still private builders and other professionals involved, but there was a sufficient group of people, directly employed, to drive the projects forward and to maintain the expertise necessary to manage the contractors.

If the public sector needs services on a large scale over a long period of time it really ought to be operating those services itself. It already has the scale to operate efficiently and it's never gong to develop the skill to do so if it's simply handing over money to third parties and - in the case of multinational conglomerates - is funneling money overseas rather than keeping it in the UK where it will pay for local training and be subject to local taxation.

And, quite frankly, it's absurd to have a dilettante civil service in a world dependent on profound scientific and technical complexity.

while you wouldn't want every last person doing those things on the public payroll

Fortunately government thought about that too, thanks to IR35 they don't have to worry about that. There is now no incentive to even start such a business and the usual suspects got very much permanently embedded into to labour procurement pipeline, making massive mark up, while there are still mugs going into professions knee capped by captive labour market.

"But it should be limited and controlled, not led by the technologists, but by public sector business leaders, accountable for and able to demonstrate return on investment, benefits realization, and UK public value for money."

Good idea. When are they going to be recruited. Actually, maybe not even a good idea because the usual complaint about business leaders in general is that they're likely to be technologically clueless and apt to believe anything the salesman tells them.

I was going to comment, but the previous commentards have already said everything I'd want to.

> *Are the alternatives truly viable and comparable?*

Not if you listen to the M$ sales team. Yes if you go looking for someone to implement your business model and not theirs.

> *Is Microsoft a good value for money, despite its seemingly high cost?*

No. MS365 + SharePoint + Teams + Win 11 is sickening every droid in my Government Department, from middle-management down. Since we moved from traditional desktop office + on-prem networked document databases, productivity has been nosediving.

> *The Answer?*

Anybody remember David Cameron? His Cabinet Office tried hard to promote Open Standards and Software across their fellow Departments. Small lip service is now paid to standards, but software met with blank incomprehension and/or apathy. Barriers such as updating the list of approved suppliers, already 15 years out of date, proved insurmountable. The answer is; education, education, education. Oh, yes, and legal obligations. Remember that even though various Germans once tried and failed, they have subsequently felt obliged to come back and try again. France gov too has a lot more F/LOSS than UK. It's not rocket science, it really isn't any more. Time to stop pretending it still is.

> */The Register will present an opposing view tomorrow and you can have your say on Friday./*

Looking forward to the flamefest. What we need is Vulture branded popcorn!

We can spend forever goign over why the problem exsists and blame the usual suspects both in terms of the departments and the suppliers. Both are caught in that trap.

The question is now people are finally waking up and smelling the roses - how do we get ourselves (the nation) out of the challenge.

Unless one central authority builds that alternative and controls the narrative we are going to end up in a worse place. Multiple suppliers, with varying levels of compatibility he says, she says slopey shoulder support issues, and a proliferation of development training and support functions for the different variants all driving cost.

If you really think UK Government could build such a thing and develop the ability to deploy and support it at scale - whilst keeping the lights on for the current estate, without using resources from the Multinational tax shy megacorps - I have a bridge I'd like to sell you....

What this would take is nothing less than the nationalisation of the government desktop, rolled across education , local and central government with specialist considerations for areas such as defence, it's not a matter of months or even years but potentially a decade or more of effort. Is it worthwhile - of course it is I can see nothing more important than regaining and retaining our sovereignty and having control of our own digital destination as a nation. With the accompanying rebalancing of trade/investment in national rather than international resources and the retention of a skilled workforce.

At that scale and involving our institutions - there would be room for the innovation and research that we get from the mega corps, but going it alone does one thing - in these days of globalisation the fact we are not on what is effectively a global defacto standard - how will this affect workforce mobility - going for a job in Australia or the US requiring experience in the US of M365, not UK365..

There are no end of unintended consequences here.... Thankfully I'm not far from retirement so someone else can hurt their head thinking of them!