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The Open Source Dilemma for Governments
Sam Hiser writes "Tom Adelstein, open source consultant and Member of the Open Government Interoperability Project ("OGIP") working group, offers another incisive article in which he discusses the costs in the terms of lives and dollars when local governments do not deploy open standards-based software for data sharing. Asks Adelstein, 'Can local governments afford to create redundant applications to meet new Federal standards for first responder alerts, emergency services, law enforcement, broadcasters?' He posits that Open Source collaborative initiatives may provide the only solution for the US if the people want to create a safer environment."
for retrofitting of local governments to standards based applications
Big deal. That only amounts to a couple dozen B-2 bombers.
...is a big supporter of this sort of thing. Check them out here. The OSSI is chaired by John Weathersby, who seems to have a good handle on how to communicate effectively via standards, reports, certifications, and so on with folks in the U.S. government.
The Army reading list
If we want secure software, it has to be open source.. Granted, at the start the code quality of open source stuff is around equal to closed source stuff but the resources available to check code that is public are far larger than any closed source firm can muster.
Simon.
I don't care if the US Senate or House chooses to use MS Office or vi or whatever - as long as the documents they produce are of an open format (text, rtf, XML, whatever), and can be read by us Citizens (and others, why not?) wihtout needing to have a particular piece of software. Same can be said of exchanging data between various levels, types, and branches of government.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I work in a US government department as a sysadmin. We have a motto. We save Linux for when we're out of money. Until then, we spend spend spend on nice Sun boxes with Solaris, and Dell Poweredge servers with Windows 2003.
So thank you, fellow Slashdotters! Your tax dollars make sure I have plenty of toys to play with at work! Kthnxbye
The Open Source Dilemma for Governments
by Tom Adelstein
January 04, 2004
If someone told you a hole existed in the competitive landscape for a large and highly addressable US market segment you would call them a niche miner. If I told you the cream of that niche totaled $56 billion and could be addressed in a three to five year time frame you might wonder how you missed it. Don't feel bad, it seems that the major computer companies have missed it too.
In a nutshell, the local government software market has not drawn large software firms. Also, independent software vendors (ISV's) have failed to adequately satisfy this market's needs as they lack the resources to serve the large geographical base. People have viewed this market as fragmented, requiring too much one-off customization with long sales cycles. Since the tragedy of September 11, 2001 those barriers and the poor economics of serving this sector have changed. You might call this a new opportunity.
What's At-Stake
Local governments must upgrade their computer infrastructures. That means additional taxes, levies and bond issues lie ahead. They could ignore their ailing systems and that means putting people's lives at risk. If the American public understood this problem one might see some intense interest at town hall meetings. If mayors and city councils really understood this problem they might panic. Perhaps some of us also wonder how much frustration US agency and department personnel feel as they hurry to make a bigger impact in a faster time frame and run into muck of local government.
An example of the problem local governments face exists on the website of the US Department of Justice - Office of Justice Programs, under the Global Justice Data Model http://it.ojp.gov/topic.jsp?topic_id=43. On that page, the authors write:
Approximately 16,000 justice and public safety-related data elements were collected from various local and state government sources. These were analyzed and reduced to around 2,000 unique data elements that were then incorporated into about 300 data objects or reusable components. These components have inherent qualities enabling access from multiple sources and reuse in multiple applications. In addition, the standardization of the core components resulted in significant potential for increased interoperability among and between justice and public safety information systems.
Many of those 16,000 fields contain the same type of information with a different naming scheme. For example, some databases use the field " name_first" and others use "first_name". Then you might find "firstname" or "givenname" or "given_name".
As you go through the local government databases, you find a myriad of schemes for everything from last_name to zip_code. Obvious, the nation's information stores contain massive redundancies. These redundancies make it difficult to share data and provide alerts.
So, add all the separate naming schemes of local government databases together and you get 16,000 variations. Create a standard and it goes down to 2,000. Put those into categories of reusable components and you wind up with 300 database elements. That's why they call it a standard. It allows disparate systems to work together. It starts to open the window of a manageable task when the interoperable elements number 300 instead of 16,000.
Non-Compliance Problems and Their Costs to You and Me
Recently, I received two requests to assist a local government and a university in the same area of deploying justice databases. The requests involved implementing a new, comprehensive application to provide services and a tracking system using a web-enabled database-driven application. The requirements of the applications seemed simple and with the use of the Global Justice Data Model, I estimated delivery within 90 days. In both instances, the people controlling those projects dismissed implementation of the standards-based model.
What should one do when government entitie
For pure niche apps (patrol car suspect lookups, etc), I would posit that small commercial companies are in the best possible position to provide support and apps, not the FOSS world - after all, where does your teenage A-Patchy Webserver hacker get his hands on the specialty hardware used in patrol cars?
by the UK goverment that they might "look-in" to open source software themselves simply because they know it scares Microsoft, like Germany, who got massive discounts.
/. stories on goverments considering OSS and then stories a few months later about them receiving massive discounts.
A goverment just has to say it's thinking about it to get Microsoft scared and giving out vouchers left right and centre.
Expect to see alot more
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
Can local governments afford to create redundant applications to meet new Federal standards for first responder alerts, emergency services, law enforcement, broadcasters
No! With or without open source, we can't afford such nonsense.
This is another clear example of the overgrowth of the role of the federal government. They're going to run our local governments deeper into debt with these ridiculous unfunded mandates that may be wildly inappropriate for a given locality. The constitution clearly states the roles of the federal government and leaves the rest to the states and localities. This along with over-regulation of personal lifestyles that's going to come with public healthcare, are the biggest disasters on the horizon.
1)"Free" is not a good motivator - coming in under budget is not a motivator if they want budget they need to spend budget
2) it's too complex for SLG admins, it's not as easy to pass an open source torch on to your new team mate or underling.
what will motivate Open Sopurce Adoption?
those 400k novell seats and their admins that still run win9x and office 97 need an upgrade very badly. If Novell/SUSe and Ximian can pull off a compelling solution then you will see huga adoptions -- not these onsie twosie deals.
Mod me down if you like but this is a strong emerging market.
Sorry you need to update your version of Microsoft Office to 2003sp3 in order to report a child missing.
When timing is critical a commercial solution can fall flat on it's face.
As seen on Wired: Get a free desktop PC
Open source software plays a big role in many projects where I work, and our clients tend to be gov/mil related. While not all open source software is "good", you can't lump it all together and say it's "trash".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Open Source collaborative initiatives may provide the only solution for the US if the people want to create a safer environment."
Here's another related thought. (And, this is not intended as a slam on Microsoft)
Open Source systems (bazaar) are often much more stable than commercial systems (cathedral) just because of the number of bug hunters, and when it comes to military apps, stability is absolutely crucial. Would you really want your military systems to blue screen or dump core right in the middle of a firefight?
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
The issues that this article brings up are similar regardless of whether commercial software or opensource software is used.
This article is really talking about standardization and consistency across government organizations -- a huge job.
Imaging thousands of individual offices who have operated in a certain way for a hundred years. Imagine all of the paperwork, homemade spreadsheets, interoffice memos that spawn secondary spreadsheets, etc. This unfortunately is how the US government works.
Now imagine someone coming in and promoting replacing whatever random assortment of tools is in use with opensource tools. This means retraining. This means new hardware. This means *A CHANGE*. Uh oh.
Is this the right long-term thing to do? Yes!!
Is this going to be easy? NO!
In order for this to be successful, it will have to have very important people behind it pushing it from the top down and funding the proper resources (hardware and people) where necessary to bring the government into the 21st century.
I for one, certainly hope it can be done, and it would be great for the US and the rest of the world (except Microsoft) if it can be done with opensource software.
huh?
huh?
The original Internet and Open Source standards came out of public monies mostly granted to university research departments by the Department of Defense. Who paid for those efforts? Why must the public have to pay for those technologies once again because companies like Microsoft adopt them and then resell them as proprietary software?
What the hell is he talking about? In the previous paragraph he writes:
If the Internet failed to follow accepted standards, it simply would not work
So the Internet works because it "follows standards", and we know MSIE (price: free) has the largest share of the browser market. So MS hasn't broken the Internet. Can someone give an example of what he's talking about? And don't tell me Kerberos because it's not the example you're looking for (MS did not co-opt it - MS extended Kerberos in accordance with the spec).
He started out reasonable and then got shrill. He throws out statements like, "Seventy-five percent of the municipalities and schools in the United States cannot afford proprietary software" So...that means 75% of the municipalities are either a) running OSS, b) using pen and paper, or c) pirating all their software. A source reference would have been nice.
Oh no...he has recommendations too:
the states should require the use of Open Standards and Open Source Software when applicable
When applicable? So, who decides when the software "applies"? Availability? Cost? (cost of development for a custom solution vs cost of COTS software) Everyone knows offshore development is cheaper - since he beats the fiscal drum so loudly does he also advocate sending any custom programming jobs overseas? He did have one good idea:
If we can pay for software one time and share it with all government entities, we empower Americans to participate in the security of the homeland.
Solution: site licenses for America!
Excellent, the first poster so far that appears to have RTFA.
The crux is standardization, or, for you DBAs out there, normalization across applications instead of databases.
One of the examples he gives talks about differing field names (last_name versus surname, for example). Well, sorry, but that has nothing to do with whether you're using SQL Server or MySQL and everything to do with standardizing architecture.
But how does one do that across an entity as large as a government? How do you tell programmers they must use only these field names? And how much will it cost to rename fields in existing applications, and ensure all the links, dependencies, etc., are rectified as well? It's not really anything to do with the platform; at the least, it doesn't have anything like the impact the author suggests.
An important issue, as the author says, is that for many applications (such as SAP and JD Edwards), no open source equivalents exist. This is a big problem for purchasers, because it makes them wonder how long open source will take to give them the applications they need (or if they'll ever come). They may have to pay big bucks for that other software, but it integrates with their existing applications and it's a known quantity. Never underestimate the power of familiarity.
And, although I hate to be a grammar nazi, the author might just find himself being taken more seriously if he learns how to use words properly.
1)"Free" is not a good motivator - coming in under budget is not a motivator if they want budget they need to spend budget
Unfortunately this is so true... I built a web calendar for a research group at a major university, using linux/apache and an opensource calendar. They went ahead and bought a Mac X Serve and had me port the thing over, doubling the billable hours for me (not that I minded), even though I had already demo'd it on one of their spare outdated PCs.
The basic law of government/educational budgets is "Use it or lose it."
I'm not sure how you can say this authoritatively just because Microsoft is a poster child for buggy software. There is nothing in particular that keeps Closed Source from being secure. The idea that "more eyes" looking at the code is the solution just does not fly when you consider the number of "eyes" that Microsoft employs (ever been to Redmond? Zillions of code ants work there...) still does not keep them from producing buggy software. Further more, there are plenty of first-class Closed Source products out there.
Granted, at the start the code quality of Open Source stuff is around equal to Closed Source stuff...
God, I just don't know how to approach this statement since it is just plain not true. Certainly, much of the most used Open Source such as Apache, Linux / *BSD, Perl, PHP, and such, is superior to most Closed Source, but really there are large heaps and piles of Open Source crap out there.
It's bad to generalize the argument into saying most Closed Source is unsecure crap, and all Open Source is Godly, when it just isn't so. When screeching frothing people blather this crud at the people in business and government that have the decision making power, it just invalidates the entire Open Source movement. The drum we really should be beating is the Total Cost argument: "It's better, and cheaper to use!"
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I agree with the parent.
In many cases, the way that government works is that the budget-busters will wnd up getting more funding (despite being called to make cuts and everything). This is especially true if you're facing "essential" government expenditures such as the military (notorious for paying $100 for toilet seats and such). It would simply be too difficult for any politician to justify slashing funds to a military at its budgetary "capacity", especially these days, and this is why the Army is giving Microsoft huge and (in my opinion) bloated contracts, so that when they need fighter jets or nukes they can say, "See we're operating at capacity, and you can't seriously *not* give us funding, right?"
It's the first trick in the bureaucratic hnadbook: spending money makes you look busy so that you can get more money and look even busier. Government agencies are like parasites that just consume as much as they can and continue to consume more (not that we don't need these agencies, per se).
This is why a giant surplus was effectively erased by Bush as a result of a substantial wealthy-heavy tax cut and exorbitant funding on this corporate-sponsored war effort.
Call it my paranoia. But in a word, open source would be great for our (and any government), but open source isn't precisely what governments want. I think they are looking more for the happy median where they can still break the bank a bit, without becoming too bloated. It's like walking the fine line between losing funding for not spending enough (and having unused cash in your account) and getting cut for spending too much (and looking bad and calling into question how "necessary" certain things are).
Which is why it is ideal (and why we see very often "looking into" open source but contracting a discounted Microsoft deal.
the problem lies not government "per se" but with the management thereof.
The same government that you are railing about is the reason nobody's dying in low speed head-on crashes from getting a steering column rammed through their chest.
The car companies were quoting "market forces" and "nobody will want to pay for collapsible steering columns," and people were pinned to their seats like butterflies to cardboard. Sound familiar? Its the justification of every elite to anything that's going to cut into sl/easy profit.
Management of government by objectives without citizen input into what the objectives are is disastrous.
Remember Clinton's medical plan fiasco that was thrown out, not by elected representatives like the congress, but by HMO lobby groups posing as experts, as being unmanagable.
You didn't get to register so much as a peep for or against or make a suggestion. It was managed right out of your hands.
People are dying because their only sin is being temporarily broke from the last scrape with the health care system.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The costs of development would be borne once (quite likely whatever software they'd need has already been done by some community or other,) and used as is and/or modified under the GPL, and copied into the pool.
Some existing body, like the GAO, could administer the pool and send CDs to any community, state or federal department that would require the software.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The article is also about paying for the software ONE time and using it everywhere, instead of paying for EACH copy of it everywhere it is or might be used.
That does not necessarily require Open Source, but Open Source is much more likely to make this possible than current proprietary commercial solutions.
Instead of paying a license to use each copy of the software, you pay someone to write the software, and you pay someone (not necessarily the same person!) to support the software.
Eventually, we'll probably end up with a federally funded department that writes and/or supports these applications. Local governments can use them for free and get support as needed (maybe with a small fee?). If a local government wants something that does not already exist they can pay to have it created (so that department isn't flooded with unnecessary requests), then others can obtain it for free. It would be a lot cheaper than everyone paying for licenses to use commercial software, and would directly affect our taxes.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
"Mr. Bray has determined that Open Source Software appears as a bad idea as he further writes: (So what's wrong?) Plenty, if you're Microsoft or Oracle, or any of the thousands of smaller companies that make closed-source software for government agencies. According to the research firm IDC Corp., federal, state and local governments spend $34 billion a year on software. If Kriss's (Open Source in Government) ideas were to catch on across the land, a lot of that revenue disappears, and much of what remains won't go to firms like Microsoft, which refuses to offer open-source products."
Bray never says open source is a bad idea. He merely says companies like MS and Oracle will lose revenue as a result of OSS. Why should I believe an author who can't even interpret a quote correctly,
Vote for Pedro
We should be encouraging commercial and non-commercial sofware providers to do exactally this if we're going to get maximum return on invested dollars.
The "open source" for government movement is as responsible as the commercial providers for constructing an us or them scenario.
Any application, developed on any platform, in any government agency should be indexed and available to the wider government community.
This is all about reuse, it has little or nothing to do with open standards or any of the many other unrelated issues that are frequently used to trying and confuse policy makers.
"...Open Source collaborative initiatives may provide the only solution for the US if the people want to create a safer environment."
Oh ok, now open-source is the only thing that can save us from the terrorists, eh?
Is that what yer selling us today slashdot? Pbbttt...
I think the real problem is people. Most technical problems have already been solved. Very few things can't be solved with a decent database attached to a generic form handler.
The thing is that we have so many people for whom pushing bits of paper about, or maintaining some useless crap s/ware, is a living.
Hell - EJBs, XML, XSD, C++ et al are all just ways to enhance job security.
*Shakes fist angrily against an uncaring world*
The automobile standards analogy doesn't apply. Localities already have sensible relationships with each other when it comes to policing and emergency response.
Local governments are becoming the last place where individuals and small groups still have a voice and control. The federal government will put an end to that. We won't have any money left for actual local government once they get through with their reengineering of the homeland.
Overseas, one of Australia's six states has passed legislation mandating the use of open-source code
1. The Australian Capital Territory is not at State
2. The legislation does not mandate open source software, but mandates only that it be considered.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
But how does one do that across an entity as large as a government?
Publish a namespace reference as a RFC, dictate that all governmental entities that are having custom apps developed adhere to those guidelines, and that they submit addendum to the maintainer of those guidelines when they are adding named feilds to the list.
The programmers have access to the spec before they bid on the job, and the spec is included with the customers criteria.
Read, L
- I thought Apple's OSX was BSD, not open BSD. Therefore not OSS?
- Some of the assumptions about local gvt (have direct experience) are true. There is very little understating of what IT requirements are at and above the level of IT directors of current development levels. But this is changing for the better.
- In America, local gvt's are islands. The level of intergovernmental coordination in Canadian, British, Australian is night and day better than America. But this is not always a good thing: In general, this has advantages for the very small local governments in the US, and disadvantages for the larger ones.
- The author does not fully address security needs. Reliability is implied in the word security. In particular he suggests using the internet for AMBER, I *think* this would not meet reliability requirements.
- Finally, the web is not in general understood by gvt. Lower funding being one reason, another might be that the web represents much more to be understood for a gvt than it does for Sears (privacy is not the same thing for these two). This is changing. For instance, the justice XML efforts are moving from "alpha" to "bata" state, within the next few years, they should be in the "mature" state. One of the interesting things that happens with XML efforts is that it educates some of those that do not normally understand IT. This type of technology allows the proprietary software and the OSS to play together. Once this happens, expect to see much more OSS in gvt (and private sector) regardless of legislation.
If someone wants the government to use their software then their software must be capable of saving to the government standard GPL format.
Government documents will always be accessible.
Goverments will be free to switch software and not worry about format incompatibility.
They can choose to use the best software for their formats...free(dom) software or proprietary.
The playing field will be leveled. No document lock. A software package will compete on its pricing and merits.
Chances are all of these benefits will transfer to the private sector as the sheer volume of government documentation will force the inclusion of government standard gpl formats into software made for the private sector.
As a bonus the GPL will get a shot in the arm as far as legitimacy go.
The government formats will also spread and be improved being GPL as anyone will be free to use or change it.
If the government sees a nice modification they can make it the standard.
Steve
Closed-source software is killing people now? I hadn't heard that one.
Whatever happened to the argument that diverse heterogeneous systems are better from a security standpoint? I guess it only applies when bashing Microsoft?
If you base all of these government systems off of a single Open Source core, a hacker only needs to find a single bug in the core software and he or she has keys to the entire kingdom of federal data on ANYONE!
With OSS the customer can see what he is getting, which should be a basic requirement for government use. Safety is slightly different from security, but there too, if you can see the code, you can check that proper procedures have been followed. You can at any time have the code subjected to independent audit, which is often a legal or at least moral requirement.
If they think that Open Source is too controversial (politicians and decision makers rarely understand the real issues) they should at least insist on getting the source, for their own use, even under NDA. That would be better than nothing, and enought to give Bill a nightmare or two.
Some, notably the Germans with Kroupware, but many others also, have funded OSS development for good reason. It makes perfect sense to do so. If most governments, both local and national, and large to medium organisations, fund bits of things that they need, out of their budgets, but with one eye on what others are doing, the end result is that virtually everything needed gets developed somewhere, in a cost-effective manner, and can then be shared. So everyone is a winner, including OSS developers, who actually get paid to do what they like doing.
The fact is that the world can help itself towards being free of domination by M$ and others, it just needs decision makers with guts and a bit of copmprehension.