No national assurance service giving public bodies confidence in open source products

GDS Principal Technologist Phil Rumens stated in May 2026 that there is 'no formal or standardised process across government for evaluating, recommending, or providing confidence in open-source products'. Every council, trust and department repeats (or skips) its own due diligence, so risk-averse buyers default to proprietary suppliers who arrive pre-assured. GDS Local's 'Sourcing the Stack' is consulting on seven evaluation criteria (maturity, governance, security, sustainability, cost, operational fit, ethical AI) but is early-stage and unfunded as a service; Open Digital Cooperative assures only LocalGov Drupal.

LocalGov Drupal shows the prize (30-50% cost reductions and £30k-£90k saved per council website), but only one product ever crossed the assurance barrier. A kite-mark service would unlock those savings across the whole local government and NHS software stack.

Fund GDS Local's assurance process into a standing national service: kite-marked evaluations, pooled security reviews, a public catalogue of assured open source products with signposting to commercial support vendors, the equivalent of Germany's openCode platform.

// Build together: Counterparty: GDS Local/DSIT, or LGA-coordinated councils pooling kite-marked evaluations into a standing service.

A live GDS Local consultation on evaluation criteria could become a funded kite-mark unlocking 30-50% council savings, but it stays early-stage, unfunded, and duplicated department by department.