We are definitely trending the wrong way.

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More solicitations appeared on FedBizOpps this week, but none mentioning my open source terms.

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The numbers speak for themselves this week. There is no open source love in Federal Government procurement this Valentine’s Day!

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The results for the week February 3rd-9th, 2008 are unfortunately worse than last week’s. Of a total 51 solicitations, synopses and sources sought posted last week, five mentioned either Microsoft or Oracle by name. Four mentioned my open source terms. Again, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Senior IT Architect contractor job opening accounted for most of the open source hits, as well as both Microsoft and Oracle hits. This means only 7.8% of last week’s postings contained an open source term. However, we could look on the positive side and say that across all the solicitations, synopses and sources sought, proprietary software only got one more mention than open source. We’ll see where this trend takes us next week. As always, I invite comments and suggestions.

Since I started with OpenSource Connections in July 2007, I have seen what an uphill battle it can be to get the various federal agencies to even consider an open source solution, let alone request one via a solicitation. This was somewhat surprising to me; during my five years with Microsoft, we were convinced that open source solutions like Linux were eating “our” lunch. On the other hand, it is not at all surprising given the marketing machines that back Big IT firms like Microsoft, Oracle, and Dell. Open source solutions with their shoe string marketing budgets struggle just to enter the federal market competition. That said, there are a lot of small IT consulting firms like mine who are putting up a good fight.

To document any changes in this space, I have decided to track the results. Each week I will scan the solicitations, synopses and sources sought on Federal Business Opportunities (aka “FedBizOpps”) the government’s central repository for all procurements over $25,000. Each week, my methodology will be to run a series of queries with the following parameters:

• Dates: the previous week
• NAICS Codes: 541511 – 541519 (essentially all the computer-related NAICS codes)
• Presolicitation, Combined Synopsis, All Synopsis, and Sources Sought

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The University of Virginia sought a solution to make all text documents in their Digital Collection Library text-searchable. Containing thousands of documents, the search engine needed to be capable of a rapid and complete search without crashing the back end. UVA selected OpenSource Connections as their partner on this project because of our work in the open source world and academia’s preference for free and open software. Their solution was BlacklightDL. The back end runs on Solr, an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library, with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication, and a web administration interface. The end-user interface is built on Ruby on Rails (RoR), allowing a rapid solution to UVA’s data overload. The end result is a license-free solution that will enable thousands of student, faculty and staff users to quickly search UVA’s entire Digital Collection Library library from their PC.

Dr. Mike Bergman gives a detailed overview of the application in “A Not so Long Wave at BlackLight.”

OpenSource Connections helped Millipore upgrade its laboratory information management system (LIMS) utilizing a mix of onsite and offsite resources.  OpenSource Connections provided testing resources and development resources to work onsite in Dundee, Scotland with laboratory end users and integrated its development team in Brazil to produce a product that had to be approved by corporate leaders at Millipore’s headquarters in Billerica, Massachusetts.
The Scotland-based lab analysts and the US-based scientists heading the projects required an easier and clearer way to track shared data.  The LIMS allowed for the easy exchange of information related to the testing of various drug compounds on kinases for Millipore’s drug manufacturing customers.  The LIMS rolled up test data, due dates, customer requirements, such as test setup and layout, and results.    The LIMS also allowed for the specification of business rules, which when applied to test result data, automated a great deal of the quality assurance work.  Finally, the LIMS facilitates the exportation of data to Excel, and builds charts in Adobe PDF, the customer’s preferred formats.

The MITRE Air Force Center in Bedford, Massachusetts was contacted to build a tool allowing Air Force Program Managers the ability to see funding sources for each program and potential duplication of efforts between programs. They sought help from OpenSource Connections to build a graphical visualization of the connections between programs, as well as the funding streams for each.