Open Source and the Federal Budget Squeeze, Part 1

"If there's anything federal agencies put a premium on, it's streamlining costs," said Jaspersoft CEO Brian Gentile. "Deploying open source software generally takes less time and fewer resources than proprietary software. It's also built on open standards, so licensing costs are exponentially less, and the public sector has the responsibility to use every tax dollar as efficiently as possible."

Local, state, and federal government agencies across the U.S. share the common goal of serving the public. They also share another contemporary fact of life: They are running out of money. As a result, efficiency is becoming a major goal in government at all levels, and information technology appears to be a key target for getting more bang for the buck.

That's why innovations such as the use of mobile devices and applications, or exploring greater use of cloud technology, appeal to government agencies. And that's also why federal agencies are gravitating more toward the use of open source technology.

It's not that open source is the "next big thing" to come down the pike and take over IT at the federal level. However, there appears to be a greater meeting of the minds on the part of federal IT managers and open source providers that the benefits of the technology warrant more attention.

Greater adoption of open source at the federal level is likely to be an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, process that is based on pragmatic considerations, said John M. Weathersby, Jr., executive director of the Open Source Software Institute.