Department of education shuts out open source

Published May 12, 2009

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Despite a national open source strategy and a well-publicised set of minimum interoperability standards for government, the South African education department has launched a teacher laptop project that excludes free and open source software (FOSS).

The Teacher Laptop Initiative, which was launched by the outgoing education minister Naledi Pandor last week, will grant teachers a monthly allowance to purchase and maintain a laptop that meets minimum specifications set out by the education department.

The specifications laid out by the department, however, specify that qualifying laptop computers must run “Windows XP or higher”, include Microsoft Office as well as use Windows Live.

The approved specifications also include a range of Microsoft applications including Microsoft Digital Literacy and Microsoft Partners In Learning.

The department does not specify any open source alternatives to the Microsoft software for the initiative.

National strategy

The decision by the department of education to specify proprietary Microsoft software as the minimum requirement for the purchase of laptops by teachers runs contrary to the South African national strategy of open standards and open source software.

The government-backed Minimum Interoperability Standards (MIOS) for information systems in government, for example, specifies a set of standards for information sharing within government departments as well as between government and citizens, which specifies formats such as text, OpenDocument Format, XHTML and CSV for document sharing but does not include Microsoft's Word format.

The exclusion of open source software by the education department also runs contrary to the “Policy on Free and Open Source Software use for South African Government” which was approved by the Cabinet in February 2007.

The allowance that will be granted to teachers to purchase the laptops will be R130 a month and the department estimates that teachers will have to pay in an additional R60 to cover the costs of the laptops, including insurance, over a 60-month period.

The department says that the software, which is primarily Microsoft software, will be provided to teachers at a discounted price of R350.

In the government reshuffle announced on Sunday, the education department was split into two and Pandor was replaced by Blade Nzimande as minister for higher education and Angie Moshekga as minister of basic education.

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