Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, welcomed the announcement.

"Government must be better connected to the people it serves and partners who can work with it - especially small businesses, voluntary and community organisations. Having open information and software that can be used across government departments will result in lower licensing costs in government IT, and reduce the cost of lock-in to suppliers and products," said Maude.

"It is only right that we are encouraging competition and creating a level playing field for all companies to ensure we are getting the best price for the taxpayer."

When going to tender for IT services, if a government department doesn't want to use OSPs, it will have to apply for an exemption through a Whitehall spending review team. Any exemption requests will have to clearly explain why it is not beneficial for OSPs to be used in that situation.

This is the second major government IT procurement announcement to come out this week, where the that would have been issued through the Government Procurement Service.