California Should use Open Source and VoIP

Albanach writes "ZDNet is reporting that a report from independent auditors and experts has recommended that the State of California adopts open source software and Voice over IP as part of a series of moves that, the report says, could save the state $32 billion over five years. Additionally, they recommend the State establishes a centralised technology division to handle all their IT needs reducing redundancy and generating further savings."

Comments

When I search for things

[pc486]

... I tend to find them:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/13/131 7236&tid=103&tid=117&tid=185&tid=9 8

Must be the season for dups.

We know

[BCW2]

That this is a dupe. On the other hand think of the number of computers owned by the state of California. That's a bunch of license fees for M$ to lose, Win and Office. We can only hope.

A billion here a billion there and pretty soon your talking about real money - Sen. Everett Dirkson

Typical

[Tirinal]

I always find it amusing how top-heavy bureaucratic governments (even 'democratic' ones) always seem to make choices based on common sense and simple efficiency only after the steady stream of free money they're grown accustomed to suddenly dries up. This is why budget spending really should be a lot more open to peer review than it already is.

Not that the average person cares much about trifles like the multi-billion dollar gap between Windows-imbedded programs and open source, but it would be a nice token gesture.

Public code, written laws and software in court

[jeanicinq]

I noticed that the laws state that the judges and court rooms may use software, the the laws do not regulate how the software is used. For example, one software package made by California Family Law Report is suppose take the parents income and expensense and calculate child support amounts.

That software, DissoMaster, does not show its work on how it calculated the child support based on whatever given input. Currently, there is no way to appeal those calculation because that process is "closed." The input on the software is not verified. Anybody can enter any kind of input and have the software spit out some amount for which the court then deteremines as the amount to pay.

"The typical model for software acquisition in state government involves the purchase of closed source software solutions from the major vendors. Closed source software is any software whose source code is hidden from the public view. Under most licenses the user cannot modify the program or redistribute it."
br> I tried to contact CFLR to gain the source code to show exactly how the court erred in more than a 500 offset of the calculation. CFLR did not responde to my many attempt to contact them.

We can tell that such closed source software can be easily abused. The software didn't take in account many factors. It needs to be greatly improved. Not only does the input need to be verified, but the work needs to be shown so that parents can rebut the calculations for any factors that did not into the equation. We need to put the democracy back into the software the court uses by open source regulations and exclude privatization of such code. Any software code used in the court room needs to be as public as every other written law.

Re:Public code, written laws and software in court

[jeanicinq]

If you download and try the DissoMaster software, you'll see that there is no way to add multiple mothers. A father with kids from multiple mothers is screwed by paying at least two to three times the amount of child support as it would be for the situation with all the kids from only one mother. The fathers get punished for having kids with multiple mothers. Luckily, the state has upheld laws that keep dads out of jail even when they can't pay. All the dad has to do is show that he tries to provide maintenance and education to his family. An open source income and expense system would allow multiple agencies to contribute software updates to verify income and expenses of all related parties to determine a more accurate child support rate. It should not be based on the current equation which was setup for an ideal situation based on a normal marriage where both parties still lived together. It does not take in account where both parties have to pay for seperate homeage, seperate cars, and etc. But to focus on the open source issue, any agency could contribute protocols or procedures that fetch data or centralize data to easily offer the parents a consolidated view of income and expenses. In reality, child support should not be based directly upon the amount any party earns. What if the software could easily fetch the amounts of cost to rent a house to keep the kids at. The software would know when it charges one parent with too much child support owed. I wonder why they can't just credit something like a credit card that is only to be used for the children's expenses. Then the system could track exactly the amount of money needed so the payor doesn't pay too much to the enjoyment of the other party. The open source system could also get rid of the amount of money that the state pockets for every child support payment. It is written in California law that the state makes and income off of child support payments. An open source system could easily allow competition and lower any transaction or overhead cost to transfer money. I know that 20% of the child support payment I made went directly in to the pocket of the state. It is like double taxation! (Former Gov Davis had a bill on his desk with Senate and Assembly approval to regulate the child support and he vetoed it.) The closed source system tries to prevent competition and any derived works. All the judges and attorneys that I have seen use the DissoMaster monopoly. If it is so easy for the judge or attorneys to enter the amounts in the screen, why do they have to? Why can't we just create a system where both parties can enter in their information directly without the need to go to court and spend more money for income and expense modifications?

Not only will it save money for California

[Anonymous Coward]

...but other states will be able to adapt much of the software to their own use, with their improvements being rolled back into the software that California uses. Having each state as a testbed for open source software is a natural fit with our Founding Father's plan to have each state as a testbed for democratic governmnet.

VOIP - does anyone use it that likes it?

[RealBeanDip]

A few years ago my ex-company, which lived on the bleeding edge, adopted VOIP. It sucked. People sounds like aliens. Our customers were turned off and complained. Eventually we went back to regular old phone service, while more expensive, actually worked.

I recently called d-link tech-support, I suspected they were using VOIP because the audio quality sucked. I actually asked the tech guy and he said yes, they were using VOIP and everyone hated it but the company was holding fast on it.

So my question is, if VOIP sucked back a few years ago, and still sucks now, why adopt it? Does anyone like it? Is the savings worth the fact that your customers don't like and your employees don't like it?

Re:VOIP - does anyone use it that likes it?

[krray]

Yes, I've been happy so far. I've always tested technologies @ home first -- and have switched over various offices and continue to do so where and when appropriate. The only real problem has been _guaranteed_ [outbound] fax transmissions over VoIP lines. Voice quality has been excellent [SIP based].

At home my initial problem was simply lack of bandwidth. Internally I've moved to 1Gbit LAN and have a _solid_ 10Mbit wireless uplink to the Internet [full duplex]. This is where the problem came in with the router having a 10Mbit HALF duplex uplink to the antenna. That uplink is now at 100Mbit full duplex and my [dropped] voice problems disappeared.

It also simply made sense $$$ wise as well. I've tried the SBC and Comcast offerings and frankly they stink. Even in their high bandwidth end VoIP saturated their capabilities pretty quickly. The 10Mbit uplink I have now is $50/mo which is only slightly more expensive (if not cheaper now) than what the bigger ISP's offer. Two pots lines would be $40/mo before picking up the phone to make a call -- same goes what ISDN (which I had) and after calls/taxes the typical two line bill was $70/mo minimum. Bad months would bloat to $140-200/mo phone bill where I now know what my VoIP bill will be. Also $50/mo.

Quality is there. Cost savings is there. Reliability is, well, OK. Too many variables in the mix will always mean a POTS line will always be better. For emergency backup/use I'll go with the cell...

Wife is Employed by CA

[Sfing_ter]

State Parks - they use Novell Groupwise and earlier this year were contemplating moving to MS Exchange; Since the Novell/SuSE deal I have been waiting for them to make the OSS move but so far no go. A lot of the IT staff are MCSE factory drones that had to "learn this Novell thing". They are hampered by spyware and caught by virii now and then.

If Novell could make embed OOO into their groupware, that would be the ticket.

Nonetheless

[Anonymous Coward]

We can post new comments.

I am curious about the potential software-patent ramifications of having open source software adopted by state governments.

If the adoption is made, and open source code is widely and successfully integrated in one or more state governments, and THEN a legitimate software patent on some new technology prevents the state from being able to make use of the new technology, could this add any weight to the re-examination of the software patent issues in America?

Or will it just cause the state to change its mind and go back to M$?

Well Duh!

[cluge]

It seems that this is an obvious no brainer. Things that we will still have to worry about.

1. His Honerable Socialist Chairperson Muckety Muck in LA country insists on using his laptop. The network traffic produced by the viral infected thing screws VoIP up for the county.

2. Expect to see the regional bell SBC sue the state, and insist that it should be paid for a percentage of VoIP traffic that travels over the network

3. Expect legislation and/or rules designed to take the software that you and I pay for through taxes, and give it to some company/cousin of the grand high supervisor elect assistants manager of garbage collection.

Have you ever been in a state that has so many damn managers and so few people actually working? If California was a company it would be ripe for a "re-structuring". Most sucessful restructures cut out middle management and promote a lean work force (ie we kept the people that actually did something). At the end of the day, what will make or break California is it's citizens. The more services that they demand from their state, without wanting to pay for them, or help in any way the worse off they will be.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

An interesting conversation...

[John Leeming]

Consider that California has, in the Assembly alone, some 80 separate offices...one for each Assembly member, both in Sacramento and in their home district.

I recently did some repair work in one of these District offices and got involved in a conversation about internet and access.

Keep in mind, California already has an internal phone system for all State offices, which many counties within California also access.

What has happened is that SBC has convinced the General Services of Calfornia that the State can "save millions" by buying and paying for DSL service from SBC.

For the Assembly alone, that's 160 _separate_ DSL accounts, all running at 384K.

Not such a problem? Consider why I was at their office...

It took four hours for the people in the District office to print something from the servers in Sacramento.

Every server within Sacramento is connected by a T-3/OC-12. Regional offices (California is divided into 12 regions for resource allocations) are connected by T-1 or better.

I fell back to the non-technobabble explanation of them having a drinking straw for internet and Sacramento having a firehose in terms of bandwidth and latency, and they seemed to understand it.

But the irksome part of the whole is that someone in General Services was stupid enough to buy into and use the SBC explanation to "save money", and never bothered to investigate the _real_ costs.

By the end of the year, every office not in Sacramento or in a regional facility will be dropped from all connections except ATSS (internal phone system) and SBC DSL connects.