Opening Up the Commons

Well, it's a start:

The Commons' members' estimates committee agreed last night it would not appeal against a ruling by the high court ordering publication of the detailed expenses of 14 prominent MPs.

I particularly liked this:

The three high court judges left little room for an appeal: "We have no doubt that the public interest is at stake. We are not here dealing with idle gossip, or public curiosity about what in truth are trivialities. The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs' salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers."

Indeed, and not only...

No, Minister

It is - alas - not often that the relative merits of open and closed source get debated in the House of Commons, but yesterday was such a (frabjous) day. The hero of the piece, as so often in this context, was John Pugh, Lib Dem MP for Southport. The villain - well, I'll leave that for you to decide from the following comment, which as was made by Angela Eagle, The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, in reply to John's questions:

It is often suggested that open source solutions offer better value because they are cheaper to buy. In fact, the total cost of ownership is considered in procurement, and it is not always the case that the open source solutions are the cheapest. Although they are free of licence charges, because they can involve high levels of support and training costs, they sometimes do not provide the best value for money. External studies have not shown a consistent cost advantage to open source solutions over proprietary solutions.

Now, where have I heard this old TCO argument before? And what a coincidence that a UK minister should be using it, no? I wonder how she, er, happened upon it...?

Identifying ID Card Flaws

As costs for the hare-brained UK ID Card continue to spiral out of control, the LSE has put together a timely submission to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee inquiry into “A surveillance society?” that picks apart the current scheme's weaknesses.