Uganda to cut costs with open source software Good to see Africa trying to stem the outflow of currency and inject the savings rather into local services. The mind boggles to think how much many African countries could save in this way! The Ugandan government has called on the private sector and government departments to adopt Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to increase their efficiency and competitiveness, reports The Observer. FOSS is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance to suit their needs, something that is not possible with commercial software currently being used in most government departments. ICT minister Frank Tumwebaze said government departments will gradually integrate the use of FOSS to reduce the cost of public service delivery. Presently, Tumwebaze said the government has been spending over USD 40 million annually on commercial software from the like of Oracle systems and Microsoft Cooperation. He said using FOSS will result into enormous savings that can be re-injected into other under-funded areas. In a 2012 survey, National Information Technology Authority - Uganda (NITA-U) indicated that top five computer applications used by government and private sector were all proprietary software, meaning government spent a lot of money to use them. See http://ift.tt/2bvtWA1
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