Stop whining.
I would like to look at this in some detail.
"Readers need only cast their minds back to a damning report published by the public administration select committee (PASC) last month that lambasted over-reliance on big IT firms in Whitehall over many years."
That seems to be about the size of the firms being awarded contracts, and does not actually touch up whether tose firms supply open source or proprietary software.
"The cross-party group of MPs, whose committee is chaired by Tory politico Bernard Jenkin, labelled the IT-buying culture in central government as an "obscene" waste of taxpayer money."
Neither this quote nor the one immediately following show or imply that the "'obscene' waste" is due to the cost of licenses for proprietary software, as opposed to other factors. In fact, it does not even ascribe this waste to any particular cause, let alone to the use of proprietary as opposed to open source.
"But despite all the open-source rhetoric, openistas including Red Hat, Alfresco and Sirius Corp were shunned by the Cabinet Office after a pilot - set up using OSS components - was overlooked on 5 August in favour of a proprietary system."
Nothing that you have cited shows any promise on the part of the government to use open source in all situations, no matter how it compares to proprietary solutions.
"The minister had this to say, for example, in November last year: There are competitive processes, but actually the way we do procurement is often excluding smaller suppliers from the process. . . Very costly, very over-engineered and it isn't the open competition that we want to see that really does drive value and drives innovation.""
Again, nothing in those statements speaks to the question of open source vs proprietary; the matter being discussed seems to be the size of the supplier, and nothing beyond that.
"He also called on open standards and interoperability as key components in IT systems."
Did he mention what other factors trump this, and what other factors are trumped by it, in any given situation?
"Finally, McCluggage said he wanted the use of open source software within government to become normal practice. Notably, those plans had simply built on a pre-election Tory pledge that stated it wanted to "create a level playing field" for OSS within Whitehall."
That does not seem to imply that open source will be chosen over proprietary software every time, in all circumstances. Actually, it is still possible for open source, on a level playing field, to lose every time.
"The winning bid was assessed as providing value for money. It was comprehensive and scored highest when compared with the other bids on the basis of its ability to fulfil the functional requirements."
And your reasons for thinking that this is not true are...?
"How can you preach 'Openness' and 'New Suppliers to Government' while simultaneously locking yourself even further into Closed and Proprietary with the same old suppliers to government?, asked Taylor..."
Again, nothing in the article seems to state or imply that open source will be chosen over proprietary software in all circumstances regardless of all other factors involved.
"Either Cabinet Office are leading the change, as they claim they will, or they are entrenching the same old practice, which is what they seem to be doing."
Can you show that requiring open source software in this particular instance will be more effective and cost effective than the proprietary solution that was chosen?
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To sum up: stop whining, and prove that there was an open source solution that was superior to the one chosen. That you feel that open source should have been chosen solely on ideological grounds might be sufficient for you, but there are other people who are not impressed.