Moving to open source software, he said, could help SMEs, save departments money, and enable easier document sharing.
“Over the past few years we’ve moved away from a small oligopoly of IT suppliers to create a more open market,” he said. “And yet the software we use in government is still supplied by just a few large companies.”
Maude also revealed that the number of government websites has risen by 15 since October, despite a strategy of reducing the number of sites and the shift of 18 sites onto the integrated gov.uk platform.
The process of closing down government websites, he said, “sometimes feels like a nightmarish game of splat-the-rat. As soon as you knock one website on the head, another pops out somewhere else.”
The government will continue its efforts to buy ICT services and hardware from SMEs, Maude added, and it plans to spend a further £100m with them by the time of the next general election.