Malaysia is pushing hard to educate and promote open source to the public services sector.

The Malaysian Administration Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu), which is spearheading the public sector's open-source software (OSS) initiative, has gone on an aggressive drive to educate and assist in the implementation of OSS in government departments and agencies.

Mampu is actively promoting open source to senior IT decision-makers, such as chief information officers (CIOs) in the public sector, IT managers and administrators

The open-source movement in Asia When open source comes marching in Thailand: Finding middle ground Malaysia: Pushing for education Singapore: Mindef's lessons learnt Click here for more updates on open source.

Since The Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan was unveiled in July last year, six workshops on OSS have been conducted for the public sector. Raising OSS awareness is a key component of the government's grand plan, and one the goals for this year is to ensure that all CIOs and IT managers in the public sector are OSS-literate. The target is for 60 percent of IT personnel to be OSS trained, 10 percent OSS certified, and 20 percent of teachers in charge of school IT labs to be OSS trained.

According to Mampu, there are currently more than 50 government agencies using OSS in various areas. An OSS certification program, as well as a training plan, has also been introduced.

In addition, four pilot projects have been launched. They are a learning management system at the Information Ministry; a training information system at the Public Services Department; a portal aimed at single mothers for the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry; and an economic intelligence database system at the Finance Ministry.

"Linux is seen as an agent of economic development, especially for developing countries such as Malaysia. But while the adoption rate of OSS in Malaysia is growing, it is still in its infancy stage," said K.K. Leong, country manager for Novell Malaysia.

He believes that the government, as one of the biggest IT purchasers, will help drive technological innovations, as well as spur the commercial and small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt OSS, he added.

While Malaysia appears to be heading in the right direction, Nah noted that there is still much work to be done. "The implementation of Malaysia's OSS Masterplan is definitely a good start, and Mampu should implement its OSS policies without fear or favor, otherwise the framework and masterplan will not result in anything tangible," Nah noted.

Several hurdles remain and need to be overcome. They include a shortage of a pool of skilled and experienced OSS workers; concerns about interoperability and integration with proprietary platforms, especially those on the Microsoft platform; and a lack of a good understanding of OSS licensing issues.

Clear on selection criteria
Under the Masterplan, the government has stated that its first choice in IT procurement are infocomm technology solutions developed on the open-source platform. Although this is encouraging news, industry players like Oracle feel that the government needs to offer more clarity on the selection criteria so that IT buyers can decide on the most appropriate solutions that best fit their agencies’ requirements.

"There should also be a clear mandate for agencies to hold open-source software developers or organizations to the same standards as those for commercial software providers," said V. R. Srivatsan, managing director, Oracle Malaysia

Srivatsan said the evaluation criteria should include a vendor's support capability; total cost of ownership and not just acquisition costs; availability of skills and legal/vendor risks and liabilities.

He added that adoption of the OSS policy should be done with a step-by-step approach. According to Srivatsan, the initial adoption should be in core areas of the infrastructure stack like the operating systems level, which have proven benefits of availability, support, security and availability of skills.

A matter of national policy
OSS advocates are also calling for the government to release its National OSS Policy which has been in the draft stage for some time.

Noting its importance, Nah explained: "This will show that the government really means it when it says that it is going to embrace OSS and it will send a clear signal to all."

If implemented properly, he reckons that the ideals of OSS and the environment it encourages--to learn, innovate and invent--can help build a knowledge-based and ICT-savvy society.

"The government has to be brave enough to announce a proactive OSS policy and actively go about implementing this policy even if prominent members of the multinational business community and foreign governments protest against possible discrimination against their businesses," he argued.