Five case studies of government organizations that have made a transition from proprietary, commercial software to open-source software are described in this book. Each of these organizations has its own reasons for implementing these projects, but one goal they all share is to reduce the financial cost for owning, maintaining, and supporting their large information technology (IT) infrastructures.

Not surprisingly for government agencies, they also share a requirement for office productivity tools. Consequently, each adopted StarOffice or one of its derivatives. These organizations also replaced other IT systems with open-source alternatives. For example, the Hibernia Hospital project also implemented an open-source email server. The regional government in Extremadura, Spain undertook the most ambitious project, LinEx, which eventually resulted in several Linux distributions that are customized and localized for its Spanish-speaking users.

Each case study is described within the confines of a technology-adoption framework originally described by Gallivan [1]. This framework defines several aspects of adopting new technology, including logistical issues, social expectations of end users, and technological suitability. The authors of the book concentrate on the notion of secondary adoption that this framework defines.

If primary adoption is the initial decision by an organization’s high-level managers to migrate to a new technology, then secondary adoption characterizes the migration among the people in the rest of the organization. According to the authors, it is this latter group that most accurately determines the success or failure of open-source adoption.

The book describes the case studies in consistent, concise detail. Each case study ends with a convenient summary in table form, making comparison straightforward. However, a government administrator reading this book might be disappointed to discover that the authors spend very little attention on quantitative financial costs and savings.