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Australian Government Agency Moves Towards Linux

Posted by samzenpus on from the change-is-good dept.

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""

5 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Largest network in the southern hemisphere? by ZombieEngineer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Largest network in the southern hemisphere? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      its not...the dept of education in victoria is by a huge amount

  2. Re:Hope its for real by strider44 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I doubt that that'll happen - they're moving from mostly Novell to all Novell. That they're totally moving operating systems isn't exactly the point here because Novell definitely isn't going to complain.

  3. Not as good as it may sound by Magickcat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. City of Toronto Government and Linux by g8oz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.