I don't think you're quite addressing the point raised. Free software in government is not important because of cost savings or efficiency. It is important beca

I don't think you're quite addressing the point raised. Free software in government is not important because of cost savings or efficiency. It is important because of transparency. For example, a proprietary voting machine might have a lower total cost of ownership than a free software machine, however it raises questions about the validity of the voting process when the public isn't allowed to know how it works. The fundamental problem here is that people expect the rules of their government to be transparent, not secret. When parts of the government run on proprietary software, the public is forbidden from knowing important parts about how their government works. Cell phones are a great example. We now know that, in part because of the use of proprietary, non-audited software, government leaders around the world have had private phone calls recorded by the NSA. If they had been using properly analyzed free software, this would not have been possible. So proprietary software not only makes formerly public processes secret but also leaks secrets. If no non-proprietary solution exists, the government needs to invest in creating it. It is impossible to analyze the cost of a government run by proprietary software. Without knowing what secrets are being stolen, what processes are being obfuscated from public view, what documents are made inaccessible to people because of proprietary software requirements, there is no way to know how much is lost by its use. If a government claims to represent its public, it needs to control its processes in a way that is verifiably transparent to the public. This simply isn't possible with proprietary software.