Today: Westminster Hall debate on government software procurement

John Pugh MP will today lead a Westminster Hall debate on government software procurement. The Liberal Democrat MP for Southport (and veteran speaker at ORG’s e-voting events) is a well known advocate of free and open source software. Yesterday, he released the results of a survey he had conducted which showed that many local authorities had no real idea how much money is being spent on IT within their schools. From the Open Schools Alliance press release:

“The survey also found that while almost 50% of Local Authorities are using some form of open source software within their schools there is no apparent systematic strategy to get best value from such procurement. Only 3 of the respondents, Cumbria, East Yorkshire and Lancashire, offer an open source solution as a standard learning platform throughout their area.”

You can watch the debate live from Westminster Hall – it starts at 12.30.

The Open Schools Alliance are hosting an event called “Success in Education” to look at issues surrounding the use of Free and Open Source software in education in Liverpool later this month.