On Thursday, Indonesia’s Ministry of Research and Technology announced a plan to implement Java Desktop System (JDS) across national-standard desktop with its own customised design, which is part of the Government effort in Indonesia Goes Open Source (IGOS) program.
Malaysia, one of the early bird in South-East Asia, said to be committed to OSS since late 2001 under the decision of former premier Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Subsequently, the Government has decided to encourage the use of OSS in the public sector.
Due to that, Malaysian Administration Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) of the Prime Minister Department was given the responsibility to implement this OSS Initiative, which allows the government to adopt various ICT technologies that may be adapted, enhanced and shared to further enhance the delivery of public sector service. With this ultimate aim in mind, MAMPU has put forth a strategic Master Plan to describe the overall framework and plan for implementing OSS in the public sector.
To be exact, we’re now 3 years down the road, which falls into the mid-term plan of implementation roadmap as laid out in the Master Plan. However, if we to take a look at the short term plan which lasted for the initial 2 years, apparently there’s a big portion that the Government hasn’t achieved yet, not even a concrete foundation among the industry players.
Then, by looking into the 2005 plan and based on my past exposure to OSS, I’m afraid to say that I can only see the light in "Education" activities or to be specific, 40% of Institutions of Higher Education which utilise OSS education and teaching tools. The bad news is that, we’re now already in the 4Q of 2005 but nowhere align to the goal.
With a team of dedicated people, we for the one is very excited to help enhance the OSS usage and increase its implementation rate in Malaysia. In the midst of squeezing ideas on how to work on offering low cost and extensible open source initiative to SMEs, where budget is the utmost concern of a company’s survivability, we hope the Government is willing to play a proactive role in pushing forward on the master plan and simultaneously, leveraging on the start-ups’ effort too.
My message is precise and clear: To MAMPU, with faith!
I hope, to say the least.
Related posts:
Do you use any Open Source Software? hehehhe
SK, you know I will have EVERYTHING to say AGAINST Open Source Software for 1 very obvious reason, but then, there are other reasons which I am too lazy to reiterate, so I will let this link to the blog of one of the better technologist in Malaysia do the job:
http://www.marauderzstuff.com/artic
les/ossviews.aspx
[...] By taking a a look into the few latest initiatives to enhance the IT skills among undergraduates as well as talks of corporate partnership, lets forget about this. [...]