Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) moving forward with 'Open Source' provisions

The first major rewrite of the laws that govern how federal agencies oversee and manage information technology is one step closer to becoming law. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday easily passed the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) with little debate and no amendments.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the co-author of the IT reform bill and chairman of the committee, said by implementing the provisions in the legislation, agencies could take the roughly $80 billion spent on IT annually and save 10 times that much by reducing poor decision-making and becoming more efficient in how departments deliver services...

...The bill calls on OMB to issue guidance that focuses on open source in several ways, including clarifying the preference for commercial items, including those developed using open source software; ensuring market research includes open source products; and establishing standard service level agreements for the maintenance and support of widely-adopted software...[Issa] added that building on open source when possible opens the door to more vendors who innovate and offer new technologies...