ISPS: INM354 Bridging the digital divide with Open source Software

Information Systems Planning and Strategy

Course
INM354
Course Code
Bridging the digital divide with Open source
Title Software
City University, London

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ISPS: INM354 Bridging the digital divide with Open source Software

Bridging the “digital divide” with Open source Software

Introduction
Government sector in developed country are moving toward implementation of opens source
software, in part or in fully mainly for cost benefit reasons and also to drive higher the
technological innovation, by exploring different functionality that can be enabled by
technology. The UK government policy on open source1 software and the EU action plan2
helps to drive this move forward.

Despite the fact that these developed countries can afford to pay for the best proprietary
software in the market, the drive to save cost is shifting their attention to OSS. The fact that
opens source software are flexible, robust, customisable, tried and tested with army of
volunteers working day and night to ensure viability all for next to nothing cost makes the
OSS idea more appealing to government who want so make cost saving in IT
implementation.

Opposed to the unlimited choice available for the developed countries in the field of IT
implementation are the developing country with little or no technology no-how who are
restricted from benefiting fully from digital revolution as a result of high cost of commonly
available software that comes with high price tag which might even be equal to the average
GDP of a third world country.

The “digital divide” created by inaccessibility to viable IT infrastructure could be narrowed

by the developing world government if they followed the initiatives of the developed world
in harnessing the power of OSS to leverage technology into their social, economic and
education system.

In order to understand the context of the essay, a brief definition of open source software is
given in contrast to proprietary software. 2 case studies of OSS implementation in a
government sector in the UK and Ireland are looked into. The essay addressed the issue of
implementation of OSS to bridge the “digital divide” from the point of view of an IT
consultant working for a rural local government in a developing country, following the lead
in the 2 case studies presented earlier. Lastly another case study of a typical implementation
of IT in a poor region in Spain is examined to put into context how a rural government in a
developing country could take the initiative of narrowing the “digital divide” by making full
use of the freely available OSS without incurring enormous cost.

The conclusion presents other benefit that can be gained from taking the OSS initiative by
the rural local government apart from narrowing the “digital divide”.

1
Available at http://www.ogc.gov.uk/oss/OSS-policy.html
2
Available at Available at http://
europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/2002/news_library/documents/eeurope2005/eeurope2005_en.pd

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ISPS: INM354 Bridging the digital divide with Open source Software

Definition of Open Source software

The Open Source Initiative has a comprehensive definition for Open source software, for
brevity, open source software is software that is freely distributed with both compiled and
source code with the right to modify the code on the condition that redistribution is not
restricted and obtainable for no more than the reasonable cost of reproduction. In contrast to
this is the proprietary software provided only in executable binary code, which is not human-
readable nor can a source code be derived from it. Along with it come the vendor’s specific
limits on redistribution of the software and the price tag. (OGC, OSS trials in government
report)

Implementation of open source software in Camden Borough of London

According to the IDABC European communities report the Camden borough of London is an
example of a public sector that has successfully taken advantage of the open source software
development approach to fulfil the e-government initiatives of delivering services to the
public through the implementation of e-services that allows citizen to have direct access to
information and services through the internet. Camden borough implemented APLAWS
content management system using the open source approach, which was selected as a finalist
in the European E-Government awards in Como, July 2003 (European communities, 2005).
Driven by innovative and effective ways of delivering the e-government agenda, the Camden
open source implementation has set the pace for other borough in London who has benefited
from the project by implementing the Content management system taking advantage of the
open source code to adapt it to their borough specific needs and as also provide a forum for
collaborative further development and bug fixes for the system. (www.aplaws.org).

Implementation of open source software in Beaumont Hospital in Ireland

Another example of implementation of open source software by a government sector is
Successful implementation of open source software in Beaumont hospital in Ireland mainly
to cut cost, which resulted in savings of about €4.7 million in the first year and a further
€8.3 million in continued savings on an on going basis over five years. The hospital moved
from a heterogeneous IT system which was costing them enormous amount of money in
support and maintenance to an open source deployment that cost little to nothing. Even
though the driving force for the open source approach was to reduce cost, Beaumont
successful implementation has set a precedent for future move to open source
implementation within the government health service.

Beaumont implemented Star office for desktop applications, Zope for content management
system, Digital imaging for x-ray, JBoss for application server SuSE for e-mail and Caroline
for e-learning, initially all costing €209.5K in the first year and €377K over 5 years. The out
come of this experience has also enable Beaumont to contribute to the open source
community by offering on an open source basis applications developed, so that other health
services can benefit from it, such as a nursing dependency system and a tissue matching
system and its casualty system (Fitzgerald, B. et al, 2003)

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Bridging the “digital divide” with open source software in the rural local government
area a developing country
According to bridge website “digital divide is the wide division between those who have
access to ICT and are using it effectively, and those who do not”. One of the distinguishing
factors between a developed economy and society is viable implementation and use of ICT.
Which means those countries or communities that have unhindered access to the digital
evolution will continue to progress and develop. Inability to access the digital world of
progressive technology means the denial of the option to participate in technology enabled
economy, government, healthcare, education and social progress for reasons including but
not limited to illiteracy, poverty, lack of infrastructure, intellectual property law, restrictive
government legislation based on cost and debt management and so on.

It is common knowledge that the divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” in the digital
world is very wide in the context of the developing countries meaning that some
communities in the third world who should benefit from implementation of technology to
solve local problems are left behind mainly because of some of the reasons mentioned above.
There have been many initiatives by developed countries to bring information technology to
the “have-nots” in the developing countries by contributing refurbished computer at next to
nothing cost, network, internet access and training of local entrepreneurs (www.bridge.org).

Area of IT implementation to the bridge “digital divide”

The rural local government can take the initiative to improve rural services and also bridge
the digital divide of the community by:
• Implementation of medical applications to enable better health service.
• Development of better educational tools and courseware.
• Providing local businesses with access to global markets
• Making governments more effective and transparent through implementation of a local e-
government system.

The commonly available technologies to solve these kinds of problems are licensed
proprietary software’s with enormous total cost of ownership accrued through licensing,
maintenance and upgrade. The cost of these proprietary software makes even the digital
divide wider as there is no way a rural government in a developing country can afford such a
cost. Even the developed world that have all the latest and advanced technology at their
fingertips are moving away from propriety software or at most integrating open source
software with their propriety software where their functionality are desirable in terms of cost
benefit. The UK government policy3 and the combined EU government initiatives4 in are
supporting and encouraging these moves.

Implementation of open source software to bridge the “digital divide”

In order to implement a viable medical application system to deliver a better health service
and management for a rural government in developing country at the same time bridging the
3
Available at http://www.ogc.gov.uk/oss/OSS-policy.html
4
Available at http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/2002/news_library/documents/eeurope2005/eeurope2005_en.pdf

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digital divide in the delivery of health service, the Beaumont hospital model could be
adopted or the application of GNUMed, a free medical application system under
development based on Gnu/Linux, FreeBSD5 capable of managing vaccination records,
progress notes, medical records and lab results6.

Better education service delivery could be enabled with open source e-learning facilities such
“Claroline” to disseminate a wide reaching education system to the community which might
not otherwise be accessible due to lack of facilities or poverty. “Claroline is Open Source
software based on PHP/MySQL. It's a collaborative learning environment allowing teachers or
education institutions to create and administer courses through the web. The system provides
group management, forums, document repositories, calendar, chat, assignment areas, links,
and user profile administration on a single and highly integrated package”7 . E-learning
system focused on children such as Vocabumonkey be implemented. This OSS is aimed at
providing a “highly accessible collection of software focused on math and language skills
grounded in proven learning principles that cater for real learning needs”8.

Access to internet with wide ranging source of information will stimulate intellectual
curiosity; which could in turn feed the intellectual development of the community and local
business and technical growth. The need to stimulate the local business growth could be
achieved by internet access to the most competitive source of export for local produce
without the need for intermediaries that siphon away the profit that should go to the local
producer, such as in the field of cocoa, tea and coffee producing, the major revenue sources
for rural communities in developing countries.

Just as Camden developed an open source CMS to implement the e-government initiatives
for online delivering services to the citizen. The rural local government could implement the
same system at no cost using Midgard content management system. Migard CMS is a stable
and flexible Open Source CMS built on Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP platform, adopted
by many organizations websites worldwide ranging from small organizational sites to huge
eGovernment portals and web applications9. It can be used for managing content on Web,
Extranet and Intranet services from simple templating solutions to complex business
applications. 10

All these software will run on Linux operating system and the rural local government will not
only benefit from enjoying freely the technology used by the developed world but most
importantly for local development and progress, government can leverage OSS technology to
deliver better services to the local people, boost local economy, provide access to
information that will otherwise be available only to the privileged few, actively engage local
people to participation in local issues through e-engagement

5
Available at http://directory.fsf.org/gnumed.html
6
Available at http://salaam.homeunix.com/twiki/bin/view/Gnumed/WhatCanIActuallyDOWithGNUmedToday
7
Available at http://www.claroline.net/
8
Available at http://directory.fsf.org/vocabumonkey.html
9
Available http://www.midgard-project.org/cms/
10
Available at http://directory.fsf.org/midgard.html

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Extremadura model on bridging the “digital divide”

The government of Extremadura, the poorest region of Spain implemented a regional
strategy on information society with the objectives to ensure the accessibility of every citizen
to the Information Society Infrastructures and Services and to promote digital literacy for
everyone in both urban and rural areas, this lead to the creation of the LinEx, which is a
customised local version of the free GNU/Debian package. (OGC Report on OSS trials)

The LinEx operating system incorporates application software such as OpenOffice suite,
Mozilla web browser, Gnome desktop environment and other application software, all freely
available and customised to meet the local requirement. The fully functional software, were
made available in all accessible medium to be copied freely and legally, there by helping to
overcome economic barriers created by high cost of proprietary software and bridging the
digital divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” in the region. (OGC Report on OSS
trials)

Two important goals were contributed to through the implementation of the LinEx project,
the same as the goal any developing country will be looking to achieve.
• An educational goal, through the implementation of an Educational Technological
Network which provides one computer for each two students in all the schools in the
region. With about €20M saved in education budget.
• An economic and social goal, through the Technological Literacy Plan that spread the
adoption of free software in education, the local administration, local businesses and
SMEs, and to all citizens through access to the Linex facilities. (OGC Report on OSS
trials)

Conclusion
The Etremadura model could be replicated in the rural local government and any region in
the world intent on bridging the “digital divide” and getting on board the digital age without
the hindrance of cost.

Apart from bridging the “digital divide” the rural local government can benefit from taking
the OSS initiative by taking advantage of the OSS licensing that allows access to source
code. This can enable the local people to look under the hood and learn which might in turn
stimulates and builds up the a local software production to address local needs alongside the
employment opportunity it will provide for local people both in the public and private
sectors.

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References
1. Open source initiatives, the open source definition. Available at
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php [14/04/05]
2. Fitzgerald, B. and Kenny, T. (2003) Open Source Software can improve the Health of the
Bank Balance - The Beaumont Hospital Experience [Online]. Available at
http://www.netproject.com/docs/Beaumont.pdf [20/04/05]
3. European Communities (2005) London Borough of Camden: public procurement of open
source software development [online]. Available at
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/3804 [20/04/05]
4. Aplaws project homepage. Available at http://www.aplaws.org/home/ [20/04/05]
5. Aplaws case studies. Available at http://www.aplaws.org/support/reference.php#Camden
[20/04/05]
6. is4profit, Open source software. Available at
http://www.is4profit.com/businessadvice/opensourcesoftware/opensourecsoftware01.htm
[15/04/05]
7. Office of Government Commerce, Open Source Software Trials in Government Final Report.
Available at http://www.ogc.gov.uk/oss/Report-v8d.htm [15/04/05]
8. Bridge, what is digital divide. Available at http://www.bridges.org/digitaldivide/index.html
[20/04/05]
9. Office of the e-Envoy, Open software use within UK government. Available at
http://www.ogc.gov.uk/oss/OSS-policy.html [15/04/05]
10. What can GNUmed do for me today? Available at
http://salaam.homeunix.com/twiki/bin/view/Gnumed/WhatCanIActuallyDOWithGNUmedTo
day [20/04/05]
11. GNUmed. Available at http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnumed/[20/04/05]
12. Claroline, Available at http://www.claroline.net/[20/04/05]
13. Migard, Available at http://www.midgard-project.org/cms/ [20/04/05]
14. Migard, Available at http://directory.fsf.org/midgard.html [20/04/05]
15. GNU/LinEx (Free Software), Extremadura Regional Government. Available at
http://www.linex.org/linex2/linex/ingles/index_ing.html [15/04/05]
16. eEurope 2005: An information society for all (Brussels, 2002). Available at http://
europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/2002/news_library/documents/eeurope2005/eeuro
pe2005_en.pdf [20/04/05]
17. Bridge, Our perspective on the digital divide. Available at
http://www.bridges.org/perspectives/digitaldivide.html [20/04/05]

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