In 2015, a published study, from the department of Information Science at the university of South Africa, mentioned one of trial cases when South Africa tried to test the result of using an open source software in selected governmental agencies.
A free test trial of an open source electronic content management software, Alfresco Community Edition, was conducted for a 30-day period during September 2013.
The key finding reveals that governmental bodies in South Africa preferred proprietary software over FOSS, as only one government agency has migrated to the open source software.
The reasons cited for the low awareness of using the open source electronic content management, as well as a lack of IT skills by records management practitioners who are responsible for implementation of electronic content management.
Also, the study found that the internal staff refused to try this new kind of software and they didn't want to spend time supporting, tailoring and enhancing the open source software to coexist with the proprietary software which used already in this agencies.
The results of the trial case have been observed from the South Africa officials. As mentioned in the study, they found that the main lesson learned from this case was the failure of SA's FOSS policy to raise the awareness about the benefits of using open source software, as well as to prepare the efficient IT skills capable of using it.
