Marginal or Mainstream?

From Bill Welty's perspective, the advantages of open source software extend far beyond cost savings. The CIO of California's Air Resources Board (ARB) said the real benefits involve increased agility, responsiveness to internal clients and team-building among his IT staff of 50.

"We are a can-do shop," he said, explaining that IT staffers and agency engineers collaborate to solve problems. There's an expectation that IT can do things quickly, and staff members have little patience for procurement cycles. "In fact," he added, "we have a lot of smart engineers who download open source software themselves, and if they think it is going to work for them, they ask IT to put it on a server and support it."

The Sacramento-based ARB, whose 1,200 employees work with the public, the business sector and local governments to reduce air pollution, has used open source development tools as long as it's had a Web site. It runs the Linux operating system with the Apache Web server, a MySQL database, Perl and PHP coding and a Swish-E search engine. In fact, 65 percent of its applications run on Linux, and 67 percent of its applications requiring a database use an open source product. The ARB shares with other state agencies tools it has developed, such as an assignment tracking system and a regulatory docket system.

"Open source brings competition to the IT marketplace," Welty said. "It brings innovation and lower costs. It encourages creativity and boosts morale for staff members because they are building valuable tools."

CIOs with Welty's level of open source experience are still rare, but as commercial open source software matures, many others have grown more open-minded about open source tools, especially at the infrastructure level. Government Insights, an IDC company, predicts a 30 percent compound annual growth rate for open source software as part of total government IT spending through 2009.

Clearly open source's momentum is building in the public sector, but what will it take for it to move from the margins to the mainstream? When will CIOs feel comfortable using open source products for mission-critical applications?

Valuing Reuse
For open source to flourish, CIOs must understand the importance of reusing and sharing code, and they must value that reuse in their procurement process, said Peter Gallagher, president of Devis, an Arlington, Va., software developer with experience building open source applications for the federal government.

Although he believes open source could play a key role in the federal government's shift from stovepiped agency software, Gallagher said it would require a paradigm shift about sharing code. Government doesn't like giving up control, he explained. "There's a paradox involved in that in order for this huge ecosystem of valuable tools to evolve in areas such as identity management, governments have to be willing to let go of the code."

Five years ago, Gallagher predicted that open source development would be widespread by now, but the reality is slow to follow. "The education process is taking much longer than I thought it would," he admitted.

State-Level Growth
But if Gallagher is frustrated with the growth rate at the federal level, Welty believes a lot of open source work is happening under the radar. "Most IT shops are too busy finding solutions and pursuing them to tell you that they do it," he said. There are extensive mission-critical open source applications being used in the California state government, he added. The state publishes an online listing of more than 30 agency open source projects. The Web site includes commentary from IT staff about why they've chosen open source tools.