NHS Goes To War Against Open Source

The NHS is preparing to close nearly all of its Open Source repositories. Throughout my time working for the UK Government - in GDS, NHSX, i.AI, and others - I championed Open Source. I spoke to dozens of departments about it, wrote guidance still in use today, and briefed Ministers on why it was so important. That's why I'm beyond disappointed at recent moves from NHS England to backtrack on all the previous commitments they've made about the value of open source to the UK's health service. It's rare that multiple people leak the same story to me, but that's what gives me confidence that lots of people within the NHS are aghast at this news. A few days ago, I was sent this quote which was attributed to a senior technical person in NHS England. We are obviously looking at things like Mythos, which is more sophisticated at finding vulnerabilities. In the next week or so, we will be changing our tack on coding the open and making our code public until we're on top of that risk. Most of…