[ubuntu-us-ut] what does it take to hook government on open source?

[Thad Van Ry]

On 4/13/08, Clay Moultrie <clay.osi at gmail.com> wrote:
>      So I've been thinking, what would it really take to get government, local or state to embrace open source?

I used to be a member of the Woods Cross City Council. I suggested the
use of Open Source a couple of times within our city and I'd like to
tell you about some of the hurdles I ran into. First and foremost,
Microsoft offers a great price on their software to governments and
educational institutions. This makes it so the difference in price
isn't as great as you would think, especially when you factor in some
things which I'll highlight. Second, governments use a lot of
proprietary software that is built for a specific purpose. (Think
about dispatching software for police, streets, and parks departments.
Also think about co-ordination of software across the country such as
with the Amber Alert.)

On a local level, tech support was provided by a consultant. Linux
consultants, on average, were quite a bit more expensive than Windows
consultants. On a state level, I'm sure it would mean re-training to
hundreds of desktop technical support reps. This has to factor in to
the price difference, which as I mentioned, is already low.

The next hurdle and probably the hardest to overcome is the
familiarity of the Microsoft Office Suite to the employees. On a local
level, the employees of Woods Cross City had several macros already
built in both Word and Excel. You now have to figure in the amount to
pay somebody to come in and convert those macros into an Open Source
product. If you can't convert those macros, you end up with unhappy
employees. In a government setting keeping employees happy in any way
you can was very important, because, you can't usually do it with high
salaries.

Needless to say, I wasn't successful in our city. I'm not saying it
isn't possible, or shouldn't be done. I'm just trying to point out the
very large hurdles that will have to be overcome.

Thad