Barrieres en doorwerking: Een onderzoek naar de invloed van het open source en open standaarden beleid op de Nederlandse aanbestedingspraktijk

In December 2007 the Dutch government agreed on the action plan Netherlands Open in Connection, hereafter called NOiV, the Dutch acronym. The objectives of this strategic plan are the following: 1. increase interoperability by accelerating the use of open standards; 2. reduction of supplier dependence through a faster introduction of open source software, open standards and the use of ODF (a document format based on an open standard); 3. promotion of a level playing field in the software market (...) by forceful stimulation of the use of open source software, and by giving preference to open source software during the process of IT acquisition. To reach these goals the action plan describes a number of different policies for open standards and open source software. A vast number of these policies directly affects the process of IT procurement within government organisations. To understand why some objectives are supported and some are resisted by government buyers, the following researchquestion was selected: How and under what circumstances does a strategic IT plan influence behaviour regarding the practice of public tenders? If these circumstances can be identified it would become possible for policymakers to take them into account while designing future strategic IT policies. To answer the research question a conformance and performance research methodology is used. This methodology focuses bottom-up on the influence a strategic policy has on the behaviour of a targeted organisation during the policy implementation phase. A strategic policy is fulfilling its purpose if it plays a tangible role in the choices of the addressed policy takers. Through monitoring information is produced about the observed policy outcomes (conformance) and through evaluation the research produces information about the value of the observed policy outcomes (performance). To see how the Dutch strategic IT policy is enacted in practice, empirical quantitative research was carried out which asked for the data of all the Dutch calls for tender, published in Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) between January and June 2010, that followed the open procedure and that consisted of the delivery of software of some kind. Out of the total sample of 94 calls, data relating to 80 tenders was received, a response rate of 85 %. All these tender documents were examined on different aspects and policies, such as the needs or want for open standards, vendor-independent award criteria, the possibility to use ODF for the bid, and the possible preference for open or closed source products. The goal of this quantitative research is not to generalise the outcome, but to see if during a certain period the policy has been supported or resisted. The collected data from this quantitative research is needed to give input and meaning to the subsequent question whythe strategic policy is resisted or supported.