Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 12:44 pm on 9 October 2007.
Angela Eagle
The Exchequer Secretary, Member, Labour Party National Executive Committee
12:44,
9 October 2007
I congratulate Dr. Pugh on securing the debate and thank him for raising the issue. In general, Government IT and software procurement are important matters. He is right to say that, through their decisions on procurement, the Government can have some influence on the way in which the market develops. However, the Government must also provide software that is relevant to the computers that most people in the UK have and, as he admitted, Microsoft Windows is one of the dominant operating systems.
Annotations
Keith Neilson
Posted on 20 Jan 2008 11:11 pm (Report this annotation)
This is not relevant to the various government websites however. Websites are by their nature independent of the operating system which the browser runs on, they have to be or the growth of e-commerce and other services on the web could not have grown as they have over the last decade. Windows may be the dominant operating system but it is not the only operating system. If a government wishes to provide services over the web to <em>all</em> its citizens then it must support all operating systems and browsers. We pay for these services with our taxes and if we can't use them then we'd like our money back.