Question

To ask the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, representing the House of Commons Commission, pursuant to the answer of 13 July 2026 to Question 16086 on House of Commons: Software, what percentage of software used by the Parliamentary Digital Service is (a) open source and (b) supplied by UK-based firms.

The Parliamentary Digital Service does not hold the information requested in a form that would allow a reliable percentage to be provided for either part of the question.

The software records held by the Parliamentary Digital Service include applications and components installed across Parliament’s devices, including device drivers, utilities and multiple versions of the same product. Calculating a percentage from these records would therefore not provide a meaningful measure of the software on which Parliament relies.

Software is recorded by product and licence rather than by the location of the supplier. Much of it is purchased through resellers and government commercial frameworks, and the supplier recorded for a product may therefore differ from its publisher. Establishing whether each relevant supplier or publisher is UK-based would require a separate examination of the records and could be undertaken only at disproportionate cost.

As set out in the answer of 13 July 2026, the Parliamentary Digital Service makes extensive use of open source software, particularly in bespoke procedural systems. Open source solutions are generally preferred where appropriate and subject to licensing requirements. Work to modernise and rationalise Parliament’s application estate is expected to improve the quality of the information held over time.