Impediments to the adoption of desktop Open Source Software (OSS) in a South African Provincial Government Department

Using a case study methodology, this research study set out to investigate thereasons for the poor adoption rate of OpenOffice.org to replace Microsoft Officeon the desktop. The BRW Model (Brink, Roos, Van Belle and Weller 2007) forthe successful migration to desktop Open Source Software (OSS) was used toframe the research, guide the data analysis and identify the critical successfactors for desktop OSS migration. The research supports the literature reviewand theory that migrating from existing proprietary software to OSS on thedesktop has got very high switching barriers and has to be conducted in agradual or phased approach with dedicated ownership and support from all levelsin an organisation. The financial savings that are obtainable from implementingfree OSS such as OpenOffice.org can be easily outstripped by theimplementation cost if due care is not taken in the planning and budgeting for theproject