Open source trailblazer reverts to MS Office - for now

Bristol City Council plans to roll out OpenOffice desktops within three years

Bristol County Council to roll out Microsoft in the short term

Bristol City Council has been forced to roll out Microsoft desktops following interoperability problems with the open source Star Office suite that it deployed in 2006.

The council will roll out Microsoft Office and Windows 7 on all desktops as part of a three-year contract.

The council faced problems when sharing documents with other councils and central government where they were using Microsoft docx file formats that led to graphics and formatting being lost.

However, the council still plans to roll out OpenOffice once the contract with Microsoft has ended in a project that will cost £1.5m per annum over five years.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum event on open source standards, The council's cabinet member for efficiency and value for money, Mark Wright, said: "This [decision to roll out Windows] is a pragmatic proposal that delivers more key functions to our staff in the short term.

"The problem for us was that we thought we’d be the first of many to roll out open source in 2006, and expected other councils to follow suit.

"However, we remained the only council to do so, with other councils expecting documents to be created in Microsoft. Microsoft tends to run the closed file format docx. It does have an open source file format, odf, but doesn't offer much support for this," he said.

"As a result, we rolled out several ad hoc Microsoft licences to deal with the problem, but these were as expensive as if we’d purchased an enterprise licence,” he added.

However, the council's commitment to open source technology remains undimmed.

“By also installing the free OpenOffice suite on every council PC we will ensure that no partner organisation that makes the jump to OpenOffice will be afflicted with compatibility problems when they share documents with us," said Wright.

The team has consulted with a number of expert organisations to develop the service, including open source consultancy Sirius Corporation.

Sirius chief executive Mark Taylor said: “Bristol City Council's approach to open source is well thought through, realistic and pragmatic. It shows a thorough understanding of both the capabilities of open source software, and the limitations of the current stage of adoption in the UK public sector as a whole.

“As a consequence, the council team have selected open source in the areas that make sense strategically and financially, while retaining compatibility with the legacy systems run by slower public sector adopters," he added.