Thanks for dropping by and reading the post. I didn’t say that they did pledge open source, but their phrase open standard can be open to interpretation. In my wishlist would like to see OSS and creative commons in there.

Re HTML part of the problem historically has been the lack adherence to standards by imposing ‘super standards’ which is the reason why for instance banking used to be hard to impossible to do without Internet Explorer.

I agree with your point on flexible training, however the challenge is also to ensure that this is of a sufficiently high standard. However I don’t think that skills alone will solve the issues, a better strategy and architecture is required.

At the moment most e-government related services provide an abomination of a user experience written in a lexicon that means nothing to the end user.

I didn’t interpret it like that. They do not give a pledge to open source. The only give a pledge to open standards. There is a huge difference. Open standards are the reason that people are reading this blog now, HTTP (the protocol to access the web page) and HTML (the markup language that formats the page) are all open standards. Basically All the Tories are saying is that they will make sure that government projects are implemented like projects in the commercial sector. Nothing new.

As someone who has spent 20 years in software development, the section on government IT reads like it was written by someone who has just graduated in CS: it has the buzzwords but no bright innovations to indicate that they have any experience.

What is missing, and vital, is the commitment to more flexible training. We are far too wedded to the idea of doing 1, 2 or 3 year courses, when we really need 1 week, 2 week or 3 month courses. In most software projects the developers are highly skilled, but they need a top-up in a particular area, that is where short courses come in.

Short courses are also needed for people to re-train. How many people can afford the fees for a 1 or 2 year course (or worse, taking the time off paying their mortgage)? Short courses will enable people to be re-skilled quickly.