USDOI Goes 100% Microsoft

SatanIsHere writes: "A memo (here, here, here, and here) dated September 19th, 2002 from the Department of the Interior's Acting CIO notes the new policy of a "Department-wide standard for computer operating systems (desktop and server)" Of course the good news is that this will herald a new era in government transparancy for the Department of the Interior. SatanIsHere Continues: "On September 13, 2002, the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget signed the attached Findings and Determination establishing Microsoft Corporation's enterprise desktop and server software as the Department-wide standard for computer operating systems (desktop and server), office automation, and asset management software.... Benefits of establishing this new Department-wide standard include:

• Lower Total Cost of Ownership for the desktop, including lower user training costs.
• Centralized and efficient security policy administration
• Greater flexibility and management functionality from products that offer a broader range of management solutions that integrate with non-Microsoft environments
• Greater productivity and reliability attributed to less downtime.
• Extended support for a large base of software applications.

Business specific application software requirements (such as Sun/Solaris, IBM, AIX, etc.) outside the established Microsoft standard may be addressed through the OCIO waiver process."

This looks to freeze out an entire Federal Department (70,000+ employees) from non-Microsoft solutions, requiring a "waiver" to use anything non-MS. One more step to complete Microsoft World Domination. This is particularly ironic considering the problems DOI has had recently regarding IT security. If this isn't leveraging a desktop monopoly into other areas I don't know what is. :-P"

Comments

I'm a DOI contractor ..

[cje]

.. and this whole thing is basically nonsense. As briancnorton said in his post, expect waivers to fly like snowflakes in a blizzard (if they even bother to try to enforce this at all.)

At the installation where I work, we've got dozens of legacy systems running on UNIX boxes as far as the eye can see. Some of these are processor-hungry image processing applications that run on high-end boxes from SGI and Sun. These systems are not going away anytime soon, regardless of what some tech-clueless bureaucrat at the top of the chain would like to think.

I'm posting this from an SGI O2, sitting on my desk next to a PC that dual boots Win2K and Linux. All of the developers in the cube farm outside my office door are doing UNIX development on Linux PCs. In the past couple of years, we have started to shun more expensive solutions in favor of software like Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL/MySQL. There are currently several efforts underway to port existing systems from proprietary UNIX (i.e., IRIX or Solaris) to Linux so that we can leverage inexpensive, commodity hardware platforms and get away from paying exorbitant maintenance fees.

We're moving pretty aggressively towards open standards and free software, and I would guess that this memo will have exactly zilch effect on that.