July 23, 2005

More on Brazilian Open Source Plans

It has been a while since I posted on Brazil's plans to move to open source software. If you are interested, another piece of information came in today, and is available below:

Linux News: International : Free Software Divides Brazilian Government

Free Software Divides Brazilian Government

Business News Americas
07/22/05 5:00 AM PT

Brazil's national IT institute admitted migration to open source was possible with a budget of as little as 50 million reais (US$21.3 million), but this would mean that the project would run at a slow pace and would only cover some of the departments

The Brazilian government's plans to migrate public institutions to open-source software platforms have led to internal divisions, local newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo reported.

Brazil's national IT institute (ITI), linked with the presidential chief of staff's office, has proposed a program of substitution from the proprietary software currently used to open-source software.

Budget Dispute

Despite agreeing with the idea of substitution, the planning ministry disagrees with the budget proposal, saying the ITI asked for four times the necessary budget, the newspaper reported.

In total, ITI asked for 200 million reais (US$85.4 million) for the project, whereas the planning ministry estimated the software migration costs at 50 million reais ($21.3 million).

The ministry also wants each department to handle its own substitution of software, depending on resources and needs, rather than an overall project for all departments as proposed by ITI.

The ITI admitted migration to open source Security, strength, a lower TCO: find out about all the advantages of IBM Middleware on Linux. Latest News about open source was possible with a budget of as little as 50 million reais, but this would mean that the project would run at a slow pace and would only cover some of the departments, local daily O Estado de Sao Paulo quoted ITI president Sergio Amadeu as saying.

Seeking ROI

If the government dedicates the full 200 million reais to migration in 2006 and 2007 it will have a return on the investment within the following two years, ITI told the newspaper.

The ITI is a federal government agency and the root certification authority for digital certificates linked to the president's chief of staff department.

Posted by Andrew on July 23, 2005 9:35 AM.