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Australian Government Agency Moves Towards Linux
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting that Centrelink, the Australian government agency responsible for distributing social security payments, is investigating Novell's Open Enterprise Server as a method of consolidating huge chunks of its network. Centrelink's national manager is quoted as saying: "We have to look at remote access, virus protection, security. Linux has those capabilities but we have to assure our more senior executives that these boxes have the same level of security and protection as the commercial products""
The thing is, does the Australian government run Linux? Yeehaw, first post. I rule! I beat the GNAA. Plus I have karma to burn. Bye now!
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I'd like a discount on my Windows licenses please!
I'm sure in the end, M$ will give them big price breaks ad they'll go with windoz.
Am I being to suspicious?
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
... the same level of security and protection as the commercial products
Commercial products = Windows? No, we don't want Linux to have the same level of security and protection, do we?
I vaugely recall that Centrelink's network was the largest in the southern hemisphere (by user/node count).
Could anyone please confirm/refute this?
ZombieEngineer
Centrelink is actually the union of about half a dozen systems inherited from previous government agencies. Some of the systems run on mainframes, some on Novell, who knows what else. All of these systems don't really talk to each other well, and integration problems have been a nightmare for quite some time.
It'll be interesting to see precisely what they're planning to migrate to Linux.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
As an aussie, I'd love to see this happen, but lets hope its serious and not another "pretend" move to Linux to negotiate better prices with their existing vendors.
Normally "existing vendors" is Microsoft, but from the article it seems they're currently using a good non-MS mix of Novell, Lotus, SAP and Oracle on Solaris.
Reminds me of a phrase from the film Armageddon... It happened before... It will happen again. It's just a question of "when"...
First Munish, now Australia. Who will be next? I can only say BRAVO! Kudos for Australian Government in the name of the entire Slashdot community. I wish US government was so competent, but unfortunately I have never got any reply to my letters for congressmen. I hope it will change some day when the US of A starts taking good example from the rest of the global scene. This is really great news.
From the article:
he will have to reassure the organisation's senior executives.
Tell them: "If we migrate your desktop to Linux, don't worry, we will also include a game of Solitaire."
I don't need a signature.
Everything Centrelink does is web based anyway. All they need are some mid end desktops running and firefox and they'd be set.
When I dealt with them I was sitting there thinking: Hmmm Internet Explorer under Windows 2000. Fairly expensive and a waste of a software license if you ask me. I also remember thinking that this department would be the ideal place for a large linux rollout simply because they have no need for standard (read: Microsoft centric) apps like word and excel because everything they do is Web server/client based with all the heavy stuff on the backend servers.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
One of the reasons large corporations and enterprises are reluctant to go down the open source route is defintely vendor support... most are willing to fork out the cash to have the peace of mind that they can sue your ass if something goes wrong.
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
Linux is a pretty common platform here at the Bureau of Met., but I guess that's always going to be the case in a scientific organisation. It's certainly not thought of as strange, though.
http://melbournephilosophy.com/
Idle oxygen thieves could apply just as much to centrelink employees as the dole bludgers they 'help'.
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
Aren't Novell products commercially available? Don't they give any tech support? Guaranties?
same level of security and protection as the commercial products -- Me thinks this means its not a commercial product therefore free??
"...the same level of security and protection as the commercial products"
Novell is just as commercial as other vendors, when will they learn that GPL software is "Free as in freedom"? And many of the packages in Open Enterprise Server isn't more free than Netware used to be.
Damnit, if Centrelink gets their computer systems actually working, not only will the sheer shock trigger heart attacks in elderly pensioners around the country, but they might realise that I haven't been to a scheduled interview in 3 years and cut off my dole!
Hell, they might start noticing that I put crewmembers of Babylon 5 in the "employers I've contacted about a job" section of the fortnightly form!
Go back to Microsoft, Centrelink, for the good of dole-bludging geeks everywhere. Do it for us.
(Incidentally, I've, uh, hacked into this account, don't go tracking Elaurian down now...)
does this mean the australian government is going to try to run w32.whatever worm on Linux to see if it spreads? and if it doesn't is that considered a failure to meet the commercial standard?
they are switching but why if the commercial security ware is the standard to go by?
i'm confused
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Remember when Telstra (Australias largest telecoms provider) went to Linux. Then it turned out they were doing it just to get a discount from MS?
Hilarious. Wonder if this is the same. I can't imagine an australian government agency would use any software that doesn't contribute to the American Corporate machine. I'm sure that's illegal under John Howard.
Is surely what the article is meant to be titled?
I think M$ has proven that software companies are pretty much invunerable to any lawsuits due to defective products.
I mean, they have consistanly released defective products AND figured out how to force you to upgrade to the next defective product without fixing the first.
They are better than drug dealers!
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Actually it's Mark Latham who is doing the whining but not the winning :-)
Latham obviously doesn't like Linux, he looks like an "in the closet" Mac user, but there is a chance he uses Windows.
Good to know my tax dollars are supporting Linux...
Now that little Johnny has control of the senate I'd expect centrelink's funding is likely to take a little bit of a dive. After all, democracy isn't for poor people.
:wq
Oxygen thieves is a good description of Centrelink employees. As the unemployed say - "Centrelink employment is for people who can't cope with unemployment"
But keep in mind that the gain from switching to Linux comes first after a few year. Initially, teaching everyone involved Linux will be a cost equal to the cost of commercial software licenses. These costs will soon go away, and the Linux software will keep on working for years - free.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
we have to assure our more senior executives that these boxes have the same level of security and protection as the commercial products ... a race to the bottom is in the offing. Centrelink won't install Linux until it's just as susceptible to viruses, works and hackers as Windows is. :)
deus does not exist but if he does
[...]these boxes have the same level of security and protection as the commercial products[...]
If it had just the same level (and most probably "commercial" means MS here), it wouldn't be worth the fuss to convert the win' aussie gov. people over to the OSS side.
Gee, a friend of mine just told me a few days back about a project where Oracle DB is used as backend on a win machine with a sw firewall (I won't name it, I won't blame it). That necause they are hell afraid of being trojan'd hijacked you name it. That sw firewall (one which isn't considered bad, usually) made that machine so darn slow (probably too many connections) it had just ramained barely usable for anything else. When switched off, voila, a speedy machine.
I never ever had ever ever see such misery on any linux with properly configured iptables.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
There really should be a law against changing the price for only a specific customer while others have to pay an unfair value.
"They want to be still able to run funny executable downloads from their golf buddies and surf porn sites without being caught in potentially embarassing situations. We're working on easily enabling these things in Linux by enabling an 'I-didn't-do-it,-it-was-a-virus' button".
Centrelink will only use the least effective and highest cost system, otherwise Australians might actually get paid the welfare the government promises.
.NET extensions and implemented by John Howard's kid's spam company.
And that would mean more ditzy daqiuri doddering dole deadbeats.
So, my fellow Slashdotters, expect a system employing Windows Advanced Server 2003, with
but we have to assure our more senior executives that these boxes have the same level of security and protection as the commercial products
If Linux had the same level of security and protection as the commercial products, I wouldn't want to be using it.
Labours official policy is the adoption of open source products wherever possible (though that is I'm sure open to interpretation, it is still better than Liberal's policy)
All these 'WTF? Linux as secure as Windows? Hahahaha' comments are completely offtopic. If you actually read the article you'll find that the current systems are Novell, Solaris and Lotus based. Linux is the easy option for migration, and Microsoft is barely even in the running.
Centrelink's national manager was further quoted:
The biggest challenge in moving to linux is burning ISOs on CDRs that spin the other way, or as we in OZ like to say, the right way. We have hired a local firm to write a clever utility based on ancient boomerang technology to fix that problem.
Those clever antepodeans! is there no stopping Linux in the southern hemisphere? We'll leave you with one more quote:
Due to our nearness to Antarctica, we have an unlimited supply of penguins. I'm very excited.
When i worked at Centrelink they were about to replace ibms z390 os with ibms linux solution.
They were also talking about replacing heaps of other legacy systems with linux solutions. I saw a few linux kernel developer/tester jobs pop up as well.
To all you fools bitching about Centrelinks service, six million Australians get bludge money 2-5% have problems, but please keep complaining about the FREE money that is given to you, there is a TONNE of private corporations bidding on the tenders that Centrelink is currently holding. If they succeed in securing them, then you'll have something to bitch about...
Maybe I can get some work there instead of being one on their "clients"
Actually a hell of a lot of what Novell does is very GPL-friendly...
Some examples:
Mono.
Financing and developing Ximian desktop and applications such as Evolution.
Openning up Suse's Yast tool under GPL. Something that Suse on it's own didn't do. It was completely closed source.
Openning up OpenExchange
And what about Novell helping out by doing their part in trying to thwart the SCO anti-linux campaign.
In fact there are few big businesses that has contributed more GPL code and developement time/money then Novell.
You have to understand that many closed source based software companies bought code from other companies to use in their products. This code is not their copyright, it's still liscenced from the original company. So out of the many packages they have, that package may use closed source code itself and it's not up to Novell to GPL it.
Meaning that I'd bet for the large part of their Novell applications they couldn't GPL them, even if they wanted to and thought it would be a huge money maker.
I hate to break this to you, but all they seem to be talking about is running a load of proprietary rubbish that they've already got on Linux rather than Solaris, Windows etc.. I don't see "consolidating on (proprietary) Novell stuff" on Linux (as opposed to "using more open standards and open software") to be a great step forwards really.
Meh, lots of people in Aussie know linux. Even down here in Tasmania, we know about linux. In fact, I'm currently installing Gentoo onto my nice shiny new RAID array, from my Gentoo setup on my old HDD.
The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has also been thinking about Linux for while.
The CSA (Child Support Agency), a branch of the ATO has a terrible database, and theirs links into Centrelink's DB. At present Centrelink's systems are very poor indeed.
I'm sorry to sound cynical, but the Australian government often takes the cheapest option, and doesn't put in much in to system design or BPR. It's entirely likely that whether they use Linux or not, their systems will be underfunded, and most likely will have little to no design. Linux might get yet another boost from it's adoption in terms of PR, but I wouldn't want to make a bet on enjoying the end product.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
There are other examples of big Aussie Govt agencies going against the Redmond beast. I know for a fact that the NSW Govt is pushing open source/open standards software.
-- james
If they are considering moving towards Linux we should push them to take a principled stance towards IP law. Not that I expect Howard government to take a principled stance on anything, but still, they've provided an opportunity to bring their attention to the issues that it creates for Linux and competition.
Am I being to suspicious?
No but you could be too suspicious if you like.
LOL, I can imagine the conversation...
"Yes, it really is possible for these boxes to get h4x0r3d, just like Windows!"
I'm sick of having my payments cancelled every 3 weeks and having to call them up and explain why I am exempt from seeking employment. When I'm on the phone they say things like "Oh, the server seems really slow this time of day", as though they are just using IE to browse a web interface.
In the end, M$ agreed to a huge drop in licensing.
It was publicised a while ago that M$ had put aside a few $B to assist with sales processes. Read - to help with big cuts to keep the business.
Three of Nine
>Linux has those capabilities but we have to assure
>our more senior executives that these boxes have
>the same level of security and protection as the
>commercial products""
This deal is dead. it would be impossible for linux to have the same (ghastly terrible) level of security and (lack of) protection as the commercial products (ie. Windows) provide.
No way it could be done.. Linux is just not engineered for easy application entry to kernel level worm attacks, and hack and virus suceptibility like Windows is. The linux kernel would have to be rewritten from the ground up to support 'security' (hole) features like that.
Centrelink online services are available Monday to Friday 6:15 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. This has go to be the only online service that i have ever used that has "opening hours" it's not quite as bas as trying to get into the actual offices.... but the number of times i've remember to try and submit income when i'm drunk around 2 in the morning has started to get on my nerves.
Are we going to hear about every government and it's agencies to switch to Linux? Sure, it's great and all, but do we need a front page story for every one of them?
Front end what they are consolidating - what they use in the offices is dumb clinets (as others have said)and disk space to save training reports, emails about which pub to go to Friday night and Footy Tipping competitions
All the important stuff - peoples records are on the mainframes (IBM - MVS). One guy I knew was half afraid DSS (Centrelinks parent) would find where he worked (ina nother gov dept) and drag him back because he helped write the assembler code used in some of the payment processing - this was the late 1980's so the code might have been retired now.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Awesome... so now we're not only picking what systems people use by how they look, you're also assuming you're helping linux (in what way I don't know) by paying tax to a government (which is probably most!) that wouldn't care two hoots about linux.
You obviously don't think things through properly. Your tax dollars don't support *any* OS... I don't see the Government giving handouts or tax cuts to linux developers - then how can they be supporting or helping linux at all?
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Nope, because we already know this is Bush's fault. Yet Another Bush Supporter aspiring to raise that IQ above 10. Keep trying buddy someday you will. And u know the funny part. When you do raise that IQ, you'll realise you're actually a Democrat.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well look at that the Migration costs are cheaper as well as the TCO. See that argument works very well with linux as well as windows.
Got Code?
Uhm, no. Australia. Well, we (Austria) are also almost there -we're heading for a mixed environment in Vienna :)
:)
Sorry for the Off-topic. I guess everyone noticed the difference already yesterday, with the PG post. Have a nice day y'all!
For what it's worth, Gunners holds quite a bit of weight within the organisation.
I must disagree. Open Enterprise Server will come with the NetWare kernel and the SUSE Linux kernel. You can use either kernel to run all of the services you want (Novell services, GroupWise, eDirectory, etc, etc, OR the SUSE Linux services, postfix, apache, use yast and all that).
It's really a transition product to get the NetWare people onto Linux by making all of the services available on both platforms. Even though Novell denies it, unless if something goes horribly wrong, knock on wood, the NetWare kernel should eventually go away.
NetWare is a great and stable platform and their products scale well. I hope they can really pull this new server product off.
-m
http://www.invisik.com
We're both correcting the parent post, but I'll just tighen up your response:
(Novell services, GroupWise, eDirectory, etc, etc, AND the SUSE Linux services, postfix, apache, use yast and all that).
The key change being "AND". There is no restriction on using both the traditional Linux services and the Novell offerings. The kernel is regular SuSe Linux, everything else works be it from Novell or all the SuSE stuff.
Only big ligs use sigs.
Relocating their offices a few miles North really shouldn't be considered "moving closer to Linux". I know we all like to hear about how Linux is taking over everything, but come on.
Lol I would have to mention over the years centerlink have had MANY computer errors. Resulting to people being over paid, underpaid, payments canceled etc etc etc . Causing strife and many problems to the countrys disadvantaged.
I have heard that a large chunk of centrelinks executive/management staff have no qualifications or backgrounds in IT
My friend works in Childrens Services for the city of Toronto, and they have been running thin clients on Linux for some time now. It may be the case in more depts too, I don't know.
I can't get many details out of her because she is not very technical. But from what I can make out, the desktop is GNOME, and they were until recently given access to Microsoft Office using rdesktop. But thats changed and now all they have is OpenOffice.
Its interesting to note that the staff are very unhappy with the situation. They say that OpenOffice is slow, and doesn't have thing like Avery labels templates. They also were given no training.
My point is when doing a migration like this, show some TLC to users.
As a current employee, i'll let you know some of what's happening and answer some of the points raised by people so far.
... IE printed all frames in one of the active-x GUI's, not the current frame - a small waste of paper which was re-used as notepads or recycled and did not contain any personal data about customers).
OS400 is still the be all and end all for the payment determination/payment systems. It will remain the IT platform for a very long time. It's expensive moving 10 million customers into a new system.
Most of the 24,000 staff still use the telnet session to access the mainframe data. Some use the activeX based web interfaces (which only caters for very specific functions which would work out to be about 5% of the daily business).
A few newer web applications using the CORBA middleware are now able to do more of the business (about 20% of daily workload). There are still bugs in them, but they are getting fewer and harder to cause. The biggest problem at the moment for web apps is response time. The more people that are using it, the slower it is getting. The CORBA versions do not interface to the GUI we normally use. We don't even need the telnet emulator open to run those newer web apps.
The telnet GUI is still used by most people because it allows us to do 100% of the normal business. It's also what people have been used to using for 15 years. "the web" is scary to most of those people who don't even know how to save files out of their inbox. They know the GUI because they spend 7 hours a day in it. They don't know lotus notes (email) very well because it isn't outlook express, and it isn't as important as paying the right person the right amount of money, or doing our other normal work. 40% (my estimate based on years of experience) of staff only check emails once a month, and they just keep hitting delete.
To improve productivity and accuracy, there is a script program that allow data entry by staff, then the script interfaces to the GUI through the empower or aviva terminal emulators and drops the data into the emulator (scripts are a combination of hllapi code, Jscript and VB code depending on who wrote it, when it was written and which emulator was in common use at the time).
Additional functionality has been added to the telnet GUI by a team of programmers (geographically seperated) working for the callcentre network. Those macros etc are all jscript from what I can tell.
Centrelink has been looking at linux for various reasons for about 4 years. Trouble is, they had no money to do anything more than small tests in usability labs until the Refresh program was budgeted by the government.
We can't easily change the entitlement determination and payment systems, because of the amount of data we need to assess. Apart from the customer data we hold, we also have to assess the entitlements based on approximately 8 Federal Acts of Parliment, containing around 3,000 seperate pieces of law, both current and historical (the system is built to recalculate past entitlements when we do a change on a current customer. That means it needs to "remember" what the rules used to be at different points in time.
Centrelink maintains all history of those circumstances, even when staff "delete" them. The original data is still retained in the "x-files" in the background and are simply hidden from staff view. If you know which x-file to look at, you can see all the "deleted" information going back to the common platform inplementation in 1996/7. The x-files contain all the customer data that was entered, as well as an audit number for that particular input/correction/deletion, the date and time of the change, the ID of the person who made the change/correction, and a list of all other circumstance data that was reassessed due to that "simple" change.
XP professional went national in March and had a few minor problems (about 6,000 users had some printing issues
Lotus Smartsuite (about 1 hundred com
Yes, that is correct! You get the best of BOTH worlds with OES. That's why it's so interesting (or should be interesting) to companies out there......
Thanks.
-m
http://www.invisik.com
Nobody would buy it.
When he took the jugs, relabeled them and tripled the price, it sold like hotcakes. He sighed all the way to the bank.
People make the mistake of presuming that price -> quality all over the place. We may buy the $3.00 loaf of bread at Safeway without even bothering to try the $1.50 loaf at the corner bakery. There is just so much stuff out there that we ignore simply because it hasn't been advertized on tv (or whatever your favorite media outlet).
Because we know and love Linux, we think that Execs are stupid to quesion it's value, but we skip other jewels in our lives because we don't know them and the packaging isn't as slick.
(( this includes both products and people )).
Don't discount them, and don't disparage them.. They're human just like us. They need to be taught. When they realize what they missed they'll kick themselves. If we kick them now, they'll just run away and never give us the chance to teach them.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Firstly... the first paragraph was a joke. Relax; don't take things seriously all the time. You will live longer.
Secondly... things were thought through properly. You need to think logically and follow the steps. You may be a Labor voter but I hope you still can.
My tax dollars will be supporting Linux in the following ways:
1) Publicity is good for the OS.
2) Money that would be going to the competition is not.
3) Money will go to Novell.
4) Novell will use some of that money to improve their Linux products and contribute to the OSS products they distribute.
http://www.novell.com/ -- Have a look at their site and see the good they are doing for Linux (Ximian, Gnome, Evolution, distributing SuSE, etc). You may not like/use their software, but if you are Australian, your tax dollars will pay for Linux products/services from Novell. Indisputable fact.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/28/0 545237
I was in the RTA (Roads and Traffic Authourity, Aussie version of DMV) last week and they had moved all their desktops to OS X. I was quite interested as I had never seen a Gov. dept. using anything but Windows. I asked the guy behind the counter about his new iMac and he said they had "switched" about a month ago and everyone was happier for it. A little off topic I know but its good see other desktop solutions being implemented.
I'm not sure what it is you are disagreeing with, really - I have seen roadmaps for OES 8 months ago, I know what it is, I know how Novell is positioning it, and I know what it will will do. Novell clearly states it is "two operating systems" - it says so in the FAQ I linked to, as well as in all the other literature. My company has been a Novell partner for a long time, so I have had access to OES for some time now.
I would appreciate it if you could point out to me what bits of my post you disagree with. What bits of my criticism to Novell do you think is unfounded? You are at risk of sounding like a Novell fan-boy, with little factual foundations to back up your undying love for Novell.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
As my name may imply i am a suse user and love linux so i think i will move to australia.
What I'm more interested is where this idea that commmercial software is secure comes from. True, security is part of "quality" and that falls into the price assumptions you mention. Perhaps it's that simple, but there seems to be two assumptions going on -- one that commercial products are designed to be secure and one that FOSS development is low quality. To me these are separate assumptions, though related, since the first one stands alone even without the existence of FOSS.
I don't know about Latham, but I do know that the drooling fool Howard has taken concrete steps to outlaw Open Source in Australia, by signing the latest Trade Agreement, a.k.a. bloodless coup by paper. (The F stands for "Fuck You, Australia".) You did want software patents, didn't you?
you had me at #!