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Government Departments: Open Source Software

What steps are being taken by the central sponsor for information assurance to ensure that open source software is approved by government as having a recognised level of security efficiency; and, as this software is free or low-cost, how this will be funded.

Asked by

Lord Harris of Haringey (Labour)

Type

Written questions

Status

Answered

Answered on

15 June 2005

In July 2002, the Office of the e-envoy published a new policy on the use of open source software (OSS) titled Open Source Software—Use within UK Government. Among other conclusions, the policy stated that "The UK Government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements." The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) published guidance on implementing the policy in September 2002. This recommended updating OGC procurement guidelines to reflect the policy; more advice being made available to all those involved in procurement exercises and discussion with academic research institutions about future research and development. CSIA—as the central intelligent customer for information assurance (IA) capability development—sponsors work at CESG, the UK national technical authority for IA. Among a range of IA capabilities being investigated is the future "trusted computing platform", including the open source Xen software in development by a team led from Cambridge University. CSIA is also developing proof-of-concept systems using security enhanced Linux to support remote working and web services. Funding of formal security evaluation is an issue for any suppliers—whether of open source or proprietary systems—as high assurance evaluation is expensive and time consuming by its nature. Nevertheless, Redhat—a leading supplier of open source software—has achieved common criteria certification on certain IBM and HP systems to EAL3 and is in evaluation to EAL4 (both for specific system configurations against a particular protection profile). To address this problem, CSIA has introduced its claims tested mark scheme to achieve a basic level of assurance in a short time frame and at a much lower cost. This scheme will be of benefit to suppliers of open source or proprietary software.

Date

15 June 2005

Reference

350; 672 c137-8WA

House

House of Lords

Lords debate on unstarred question on what progress has been made on the Typhoon (Eurofighter) programme and the aircraft's introduction into service with the Royal Air Force

Lords debate on unstarred question on what progress has been made on the Typhoon (Eurofighter) programme and the aircraft's introduction into service with the Royal Air Force.

Lead member

Lord Craig of Radley

Answering member

Lord Bach

Department

Ministry of Defence

Type

Questions for short debate

Date

13 January 2005

Reference

668 c397-409

House

House of Lords

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