Dr. Andrew Wheatley, Minister of Science, Energy and Technology, Government of Jamaica has shared the governments intent to increase the use of open source software through an official note on Jamaica Information Services. The use of open source software will boost ICT within government vertical.
Guided by recommendations outlined in an Open Source Policy Framework report which was completed in late 2016, Minister Wheatley recently shared, “It is clear that there are huge benefits to be gained from greater use of open source software by developing countries like Jamaica and we intend to take a more active approach to incorporation of these types of software across government.”
Sharing about recurrent enterprise agreements with Microsoft, IBM and other proprietary software vendors, Minister Wheatley said, “For a very long time we have been confined by the strictures and high costs of the license regimes of proprietary software offerings and we will now, in keeping with goals of our Vision 2030 plan, make the move to unleash the innovative capacity of our country by leading the way in the adoption of open source platforms”
Open source software is gaining popularity, many enterprise online services and social media platforms are built using it today.
Dr. Wheatley said that soon he will be forming a Technical Working Group comprising of representatives from the Office of the CIO, eGov and the Ministry of Science Energy and Technology. The group will devise an action plan for the Adoption and Migration of Government Platforms to Open Source Software.
