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Open Source in Government
A reader writes: "There is a feature running on NF about a conference this October. More information can be found on the conference website." It's worth pointing that despite the fact that the conference is two days long, the organizers have asked for material submissions to be included in the conference handbook. So, if you've got some materials/thoughts, start polishing them up.
Sounds like a good plan...
Unfortunately, I think many poeple will have a hard time planning to go to a conference only 2 1/2 months away.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Who cares? To the average person, Linux = Open Source = Free Software. That's good enough for me, the more people that are aware of anything along those lines, the better.
Is your browser retarded?
but I use Lunix so I must be in favour, right?
Oh really? I wonder if that reader happens to have OSDN paying his wages.
Anyone remember the time when an "Ask Slashdot" question asked for the best places for a newbie to contribute to OS projects? Sure enough comment after comment pointed readers to sourceforge, driving up advartising revenue, as planned. Apparently newsforge needs a hits boost.
These were his claims (before you mod me down, remember that I disagree with his assessment, I'm just the messenger here)
So anyway, I'm glad the gov't is taking a second look. Hopefully Linux has improved since then.
The more governments get involved the more I start to worry.
How long after Sadam Husain launches a major investment in OSS will it be before the US Govt. bans all its citizens form partisipating.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
it would be this mat... that would lay on the ground and have all kinds of different "conclusions" that you could "jump to". GET IT?!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Just wondering, Typical questions.
1. If you want to use an opensource product, where do you learn about it? I know about oracle and mysql, but who do I goto for mysql paid support?
2. What about total solutions, other than RedHat or VA Software, are there other vedors? Or do I just goto IBM and Say "Linux"?
3. Are any opensource vendors bidding on government contracts?
4. Do the opensource vendors support 24/7 priority support? What about public safety? (fire/police/ambulance/etc.)
I deal with public safety, and they want a live person, with escalation if something is service impacting. They want service level agreements.
If I contact a large vendor, they have all those answers, they even seek my business. I have not seen much opensource support or opensource products besides apache and support utiltiies. I have not *seen* many adverts, people offering demos, people offering to fill a niche market, where are the opensource companies people need to turn too?
What do they think about the UK's primary services gateway being entirely a M$ shindig, especially with reports that only IE is allowed as the client browser.
With all the M$ help, and Bill Gates' trips to the UK, we'll need to start aquiring as much custard pies as possible. We know Bill loves them, especially the French varieties.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Ok, Linux, despite what M$ may claim, has a place in today's post-pets.com/IPO/stupid-investing economy. As such, it's not as visible anymore. Think of it this way: when cell phones first came out, you knew who had one. They were different, elitist. Now, hilljacks from BFE Arkansas have cell phones, and no one notices. Once a Product becomes a standard part of everyday life, it just blends into the background.
This conference wants to 'Raise Awareness' and such and such. I think that, for the most part, people are aware of Open-Source. There are few markets, such as the lucrative US gov't market, that have yet to fully embrace it, but that's only a matter of time.
As of today, there are quite a few open-source companies, who unfortunately compete against each other, more often than not. This, IMHO, is the only reason that OSS is not as widely used as of yet. Yes, blame M$. But, that's just marketing. Marketing does wonders, but it's not everything. What is needed to overtake their monopolistic standing is another strong (not as big perhaps, but strong), company, with a very stable business behind it.
When i first heard of United Linux, my thought was, "Finally." But, no, it's simply a loose conglomerate of some lesser distros. What is needed to finally grab hold of these markets that seem so out of reach, is a single entity. If I'm a businessman, and wish to use Linux, I ask, ok, show me linux. What happens? I'm asked, "What do you want? Suse, Lindows, Mandrake, Debian, United, RedHat, ect.?" This does not work. If a businessman were instead told, "Here is Gerf Linux, the best supported and used Linux distro out there. It's the de facto Linux for all users. And, it's parent company, Gerf Inc. is making money, and will be around to support it too." THAT my friends, is what would finally make Linux, or any software in general, look more appealing to a company/government/user/organization. So, who can do that, and how? Sadly, no one. Unless standards were set for every miniscule detail, this system is not going to prosper in the way we wish it to.
This is typical generic FUD you would hear from misinformed people. Some people have vaguely heard about this Linux thing and the clichés that go with it (albeit this slowly changing). This shows that main battle Linux is now facing is the Marketing one, as in technology it's on par and often better than the alternative.
I hope that with IBM/HPaq/Dell and so on entering the field this will slowly change
Who's going to bribe politicans to get the government to use OSS? The tone of these articles suggest that the government would use it because it is better. Perhaps the author is trying to be funny.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I live in a third world country, and our government is pushing towards creating standards for the the development of government software. One of the points is to require all software developed for any government instance to be Open Source, they are even considering to create a sourceforge-like repository to handle all the projects.
Why is this? well, I can see one obvious reason: all the local governments, central government instances, institutes, dependencies, etc have in one point of time developed software systems. One of the first dreams about the internet was to make all the government information available for the public, but in a disordered environment where everyone creates their own solution, using their own contractors, using their own tools and methos, you end up with a mess.
I have seen a LOT of goverment software made in tools like FoxPro, VB, Pascal, etc by people who just had little knowledge in the field (mostly just-graduated people who had a "contact" with somebody making the desicions). The issue is that if you make standards and force the solutions to be Open Source (so anybody can audit your code) you gain a lot.
I have always put the peruvian case as an example, the problem is that they got too much publicity and the big boys pushed back. Here everything is being done a lot quieter, but the end goal is almost the same.
I have grat hopes in this kind initiatives.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
The conferance should not limited itself to what Linux can do for the Government but it should ask what your government can do for Linux.
Remember the internet exists not because compuserve decided to open its protocals but because the US government did. Open Source is a public good, and really needs public support (see economics 101, tragedy of the commons, and freeloader impact for details).
The easiest way to support Open Source is to make Code contributions tax deductable. Tax exemption has driven the charity business in this country for years and it has funded a great deal of public good with minimal direct government control, and arguable one of the best overhead/performance ratios. Doesn't United Way operate at 11% overhead? Direct government departments like schools run at closer to 50% overhead with only a fraction of money actually spent in the classroom.
Again - this is a forum to discuss an effecient method for funding the public good which is Open Source through tax deductions for individuals who contribute.
AIK
...The idea of increasing the use of software, esp. OSS, to manage and automate governmental systems, is definitely a good idea. Why? When computers are doing the computation/delivery of information, transaction costs are reduced to zero. I'd say this would make for a more efficient and less bloated form of government, once the actual programming and configuration of said systems were completed. The only caveat is that the policies and procedures implemented in such programs would have to be scrutinized to ensure fairness and equality.*
That said, I don't think I've seen or heard of any open source application aimed at sectors of governmental operation... Any input on that subject?
*(I use the terms 'fairness' and 'equality' relatively loosely, so they can still be applied to the subject of national government.)
May the threads progress competently.
MICA [http://www.health.state.mo.us/MICA/nojava.html] is an open-source project for the Missouri Information for Community Assessment. It is run off of Linux and the source code has been shared with other states to provide health statistics for their communities.
I believe that this would be a prime example of what good open source projects do for government, and how helpful it is to a community.
isn't a good idea to start a huge open source movement? I mean now with linux you can almost do anything that windows can do plus the fact that it is more stable always helps. Same with BSD and any of the others the only diference is that Linux is becoming more world known then BSD. I am totaly for a open source movement.
This seems like a natural first step, but it's almost impossible to discuss the possibility of using open source with real teachers in real US schools because most teachers are simply afraid of technology. You know, it's like oh the little gremlins in the box are controlled by some guy in the district office who is watching me and recording every move I make. Please, just leave me alone before they find out I was talking with you about this hacker stuff.
Even those who are supposed to be teaching technology will tell you that they have this huge investment in proprietary MS, educational titles so they have no choice but to stick with it. However, when you demonstrate that those same apps work under Wine they come up with this shuffle the feet thing that basically comes back to well I don't know about these important things that the district decides on and it's not really my business because the district has its policies.
Then when I push for details on how the district is in such control over the individual classrooms they come to the part that really kills me which is where they say they have to use MS because it allows them to access the net and any non MS servers on their network are forbidden by the district. Perhaps this is just a snowjob from a teacher who is giving me a bunch of shit, but this is what I was told.
At least school districts should encourage teachers to try and use open source rather than actively discouraging them with district policies set by Redmond. The situation we're in is insane and this is tax payers money. I don't see how the free market argument works in favor of closed source when we're dealing with tax dollars to begin with.
We work fairly closely with the state for alot of online stuff, (manage a state, county and local websites, state agencies, web apps, that kind of thing) and we're a big open source shop... we've had developers that have worked (in spite of our stupid IP-owning contracts) for open source projects such as FreeTDS. We use Apache, Perl, tomcat, mysql, Postgres, Linux. Yeah, we have some commercial stuff here too, Oracle, Informix, and some commercial dev libraries. On the whole, we use open source when we can... we're a pretty geeky shop and management doesn't care how the job gets done as long as it does get done, which makes for a pretty cool environment to work in, as we can play around with all sorts of different methods.
Having said that, pushing Open Source in government, (ANY government, at least here in the US) is very tricky... this is changing a bit as security is becoming a bit of a critical issue for many agencies, and the "don't ask, don't tell" policies of many commercial shops w/r/t security is starting to wear thin. However, for the large part, commercial vendors still run the show. Our states' information management services division is very much a buzzword-du-jour type shop, pimping the latest redmond-hyped technology, often to the detriment of the taxpayer (when a simple open source solution would suffice just as easily, and cost only labor...) Of course, finding someone who can run a few "Wizards" to cobble together some microsoft apps into a work system is alot easier than finding people clueful enough about open source to make it work really well...
Also another prevailing attitude is the good old "you get what you pay for" stance, although this varies from place to place... the reaction covers the scale from "We don't want no hippie-pinko crap on our network" to "You can save us how much????"
Hopefully as time goes on, the attitudes in government towards open source will shift further towards the positive, but I think that this could take quite a while. Just a few thoughts....
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Exactly plus the fact that the more people that are aware of this material the better b/c the more people are going to work with it making it, the product, better! It is a great idea IMHO.
Oh, that's easy. "Business is bad. Microsoft is evil. George W. Bush is a dictator. Business is bad, bad, bad. Everything should be free. Free Tibet. Business is bad. Impeach Bush." Gimme a fucking break. How can people be so rational while they're writing code, and so random and stupid at all other times?
I mean, face it that's what you're proposing. I don't think it's nessessarily a bad thing to propose either, BUT... look at the situation globally.
I've got to imagine that other governments, which are becoming more and more computer dependant don't like the idea of being dependant on a US company for their systems. Thus the murmer from other countries about using OpenSource software. Developers in their own countries can develop the software, see the source, et. al. Maybe we'd still have that with IBM Linux, but the question you should be asking is what's to stop the US Government form asking Microsoft to stop producing a Aribic language version of their software? Could they do the same with IBM linux?
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
I know that open source software has a good security track record, but if governments start to run open source software to support their infrastructure doesn't it open a whole new can of worms?
Is open source robust enough to resist tampering by whole countries? Wouldn't you have to run security checks on the lead developers? Imagine all of the back doors you could put in if you really tried. I guess this isn't much of a concern now because there isn't a strong movement for it.
Wouldn't you have to have at some point a closed government modified/verified branch?
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
They say that if you play the MS Windows CD backwards, you hear satanic messages... But thats nothing... If you play it forwards, it installs windows :D
The other MAJOR problem is that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. The building I work in has 10 floors. Each one of these floors has their own computer room, it is massive BTW, and server/network teams. They ALL use different equipment for the SAME tasks.
On thing I see open source fixing is the buying process.
http://www.oss-institute.org/
WHY do I have to wait 20 sec to post this?
L:
I hope you didn't just pull those boxes as suggested. He was obviously in the wrong. I hope you took the time to point out alternatives and clear up his misguided opinions.
Auditors don't run projects, you do. I work for a state governmemt. And a lot of our projectes are federally funded of course. But that doesn't mean the feds get to run the show. Open source is clearly in the public interest. And my projects are better for it. And the feds (my feds I guess) approve.
This type of situation demonstrates the lack of communication between business planning and IT. When you let your exec runs your IT decisions -- disaster! (Like the IBM commercial -- is this implementable? No.) Equally disasterous, when IT makes all the tech decisions without involving the execs. (You built what? Cool. But we don't sell those widgets anymore. You just wasted the last six months on something we phased out four months ago.) Hello. Time for a business model that lets your IT and your Business Planning talk about some fundamentals.
FUD runs both ways my friends. If you don't step up and correct some of it, the problem just gets worse.
DISA has released a DII COE kernel for Red Hat 7.2 This can be interpreted that the DoD is slowly accepting Linux as a "standard" server and workstation.
http://www.disa.mil/coe/kpc/linuxpc.html
An open source project to reimplement the DII COE APIs
http://rhinohide.cx
The simple fact is that the US Government is the single largest "company" in the World. It has millions of employees, hundreds of thousands computers, and it purchases things from thousands of other companies.
It is this purchasing power that affects everyone. In the business world you try to lower the barriers of communication and collaboration with your main customers as much as possible. Often this means switching to applications that the customer users. They use EDI, so you use EDI; they accept bids on a website that requires Intnernet Explorer, you run a Windows machine to use Internet Explorer; they will only accept Word documents in response to Request for Proposals, you don't dare risk having something misformatted because you used OpenOffice and loose a million dollar bid.
Get the picture? If the government switches to Linux, OpenOffice, Apache, etc, and sends messages back to vendors that say, "I'm sorry, I couldn't open your attachment it was in a format my software doesn't understand," guess what? That vendor will change to fit what the goverment wants.
Now, Microsoft will say this is bad. It is bad...for Microsoft. It is bad for them because they will loose customers. It is not bad for capatalism, as they would try to say. Sure, it means that software companies like MS will not be as big as they have been in the past, they will cut jobs, they will have lower shareholder value, yada yada yada. But, this does not mean capitalism is hurt. It just means the money that was going to MS will now be going to other things.
Those other things might be other software companies, like Redhat, or others yet to be founded, or it might be that the money is spent to improve roads, cleanup toxic dumps, or build a high speed commuter rail. This doesn't make MS happy, but it makes taxpayers happy.
In fact, the government might not spend the money at all, instead, they might lower taxes. And the companies that save money by not buying MS will spend the money on capital improvements that enchance their business, or on the employees.
And when employees have more money in their pockets because of lower taxes and higher paychecks, they will spend it on cars, clothes, books, computers (which cost less because they don't have Windows on them), and other things.
This is why Microsoft fights tooth and nail to stop a goverment from switching. They did it in Mexico, they are doing it now in Peru and China.
Remember, Microsoft is a very good and successful company, but they are also a rich kid that hordes it's money. They do not stimulate the economy the way companies that spend do.
I'm curious, where do you live that you get free electricity? Where buildings require no maintenance? Where infrastructure never needs repairs or upkeep?
I'm really curious about this. I would have hoped "an econ student" would know better than this.
I can almost see where software costs might reduce towards zero. System costs would not. Facility costs would not. And as those wonderful TCO studies love pointing out, initial system costs are usually not the largest part of lifecycle costs.
I'm not saying OSS wouldn't reduce costs for governments. I expect it will/would. But don't try to sell it as "reduce transaction costs to zero." That is simply dishonest.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
First of all, most libraries you use on Linux are LGPL based. This means they can be linked against without having to adopt a GPL license. The absolute only case where your derivative software must be GPL is only if the library you are using is GPL.
What does this mean? It means you can write public software to your heart's content with the caveat that you must spend a little effort investigating what libraries your code uses.... which is something you do as a course of your job anyways.
Examples of libraries that are LGPL:
glibc, GNOME libraries, wine, etc.. etc.. etc..
On another note, I wonder why my tax dollars go to pay for software which, because it is in the public domain, can be reused in a commercial application and cause me to have to pay for it again.
The GPL serves the very useful public function of ensuring that publically available IP cannot be co-opted by an entity and monopolized.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I'm working on a couple of projects they tell me will be open source (I haven't seen the license yet, but I expect it to be fine) for the EPA. There are some good reasons for making it open source:
- The same physics apply everywhere. I write one Gaussian plume atmospheric transport routine, and it works for anyone who wants to use it.
- People can review the work. Other models do the same thing, but the source code is not available. Meteorologists aren't going to reverse-engineer the code and figure out what's going on. They would rather be able to review it outright.
- It helps other organizations which have the same problems.
Granted, the particular code that processes data for the Regional Haze Rule isn't very helpful to anyone but the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and the states, but consider the utility of open source library software, call tracking software, document retrieval software, GIS applications, and more.There are a number of special purpose applications that governments have a particular need for, and there's no reason everyone should develop the software separately.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
If you flew into any of the NY-NJ airports since 1999, FAA Air traffic managers controling your flight were looking at the weather on Debian Linux Dell PC's (PPro 200's!). The NWS Aviation Digital Data Service web site, where pilots go to get their weather graphics before they fly, is all Linux.
I've got two award plaques on my wall from the FAA in thanks for those deployments so I'd say that at at least some govt workers have a clue. Our organisation is also deploying Linux clusters for the Army, and they are being used daily for operations in the US and Middle East. There are all types of people in Government. Some actually do good work.
Before the awards I was asked to keep our linux deployments quiet, because of all the perception problems mentioned. The FUD was false. Working, reliable systems, at minimal cost spoke for themselves.
I used to privately evangelize about Linux, but now I consider my ability to deploy complex and reliable Linux based systems a competitive advantage.
Yes, it is one thing to evangelize Linux when no one has heard of it, but now you almost hope that your competitors use something else.
plone.org just linked to great little promo video by someone at the Government of Hawaii (Windows Media Format). [ low bandwidth | high bandwidth | 1.7MB .AVI ] showing the features of their new website built with Python, Zope, Zope CMF Plone skin, etc. All open source, of course.
Tax deductions could be one big good A+ score.
Teachers are not afraid of technology as much as the language clash. School is with groups of individuals together yet virtual school with individuals apart is not school. We will always need close social educational institutions with and without electronic technology.
An earlier excerpt:
There is sufficient evidence that Government Agencies and Corporate Commerce have pumped maintenance procurement finances, virtual contracts, of free products or free services with guarantee enablers of such without use.
The agencies would use the free software yet only with GSA contract support with vendors that did not orginally make or contribute to the free software. If one million dollar contract was made to support the software and there was no support needed for the term of the contract then the one millions would become all profit to the selected [non government agency] groups. The particular free software is already supported a for free(dom) b by volunteers and academia that have used the software for over ten years and c by corporate sponsorships.
The agencies and corporates should either not make the virtual contracts to save taxpayer money or make good use of the money and continue active and expansive support to the free products and free services.