French government to test open-source on the desktop

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February 11, 2004 (IDG News Service) -- The French government will install open-source software on the desktop as part of Project ADELE, a plan to computerize much of the country's administration by 2007, a government official said today.
The administration will migrate a significant number of its desktops to open-source operating systems and application software, Jacques Sauret, director of the French Agency for the Development of the Electronic Administration, told a meeting of the French IT and Telecoms Press Club.
Whether that significant number will be 5%, 10% or 15% is still being debated, he said.
Today, almost all the French government's desktop PCs run some version of Microsoft Windows, with just 1% or 2% running an operating system from another West Coast company, Sauret said. He declined to name the company.
Introducing open-source software will give the government experience in managing competing suppliers and allow it to better evaluate the interoperability and comparative life-cycle costs of the different systems, he said.
The French government wants to spend a higher proportion of its IT budget on integration and innovation.
That means spending less on software licenses, so as it introduces open-source software to the desktop, the government hopes to reduce the cost of its proprietary systems by beating Microsoft Corp. down on price, he said. Currently, each department negotiates its own price with the company.
"Today, we're a captive market. We're going to engage in discussions with Microsoft to obtain a single tariff for the whole administration to get economies of scale," Sauret said.

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