Petition calls for UK government to open source IT

An anonymous reader writes: The UK government website has a petition calling for the source code for government projects to be released under a Free licence. It seems to me that the tax payer should have a right to use the source code they have paid to have developed (except for certain military projects). Shouldn't the citizens also have a right to audit the security of database systems which store their personal information? Does the Slashdot community think that open sourcing government projects will help reduce costs by promoting the use of existing Free projects as the basis for new systems?