Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the future role of open source software in industrial strategy (a) for the digital economy and (b) as an enabling platform; and what steps he is taking to support that software in relation to public sector procurement.

The Government's Open Standards Principles are helping to level the playing field for open source and proprietary software, and disaggregating government IT into smaller, more manageable components.

The Government IT Strategy states ‘Where appropriate, government will procure open source solutions. When used in conjunction with compulsory open standards, open source presents significant opportunities for the design and delivery of interoperable solutions.’

To support interoperability in the public sector, we have a preference for royalty-free software generated in an open and transparent manner, which is often open source.