South Africa: Sita Issues Open-Source Software Tender

Business Day (Johannesburg)
September 22, 2005
Lesley Stones

THE largest tender yet issued for open-source software has been released by the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), formalising its plans to switch from brand-name packages to the free-to-use alternatives.

Sita is offering three-year deals to supply software and technical support so that many of government's estimated 300000 PCs can migrate to open source.

Sita has not said how much it expects to spend with open-source suppliers, nor how much it will save on software licence fees. But with each computer costing R1000-R5000 in licence fees each year, the savings should eventually hit billions of rand."