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U.S. Fed Goes Brand Neutral
Rollie Hawk writes "The White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent out notice this week that government purchases, including in IT, need to be open to many brand names. 'We are concerned the use of brand name specifications in agency solicitations may have increased significantly in recent years, particularly for information technology procurements,' according to the OMB. AMD is certainly happy with this news, having long complained of the unholy marriage between the Fed and Intel. Perhaps this will even open the way for Linux and other open-source options being chosen over Microsoft and the like. If this works out, it will lead to a better fiscal situation on many fronts. The increased competition will lower the cost to taxpayers (though the money will still get spent somewhere) and the wider spread of contracts will help competitors to chip away at the dominance of Microsoft and Intel."
Because the money that you "Don't see" will be used to fund schools or keep some poor single mother's kids fed for another day.
Right. I work in the US federal government. At the end of some funding "cycles" (use it or lose it), Dell cartons have been stacked in the hallways. It was so bad, wondered whether the top IT guy had Dell stock. Maybe he honestly thought they were the best.
Mods; forgive my posting as AC, but I'm not really supposed to talk about this aspect of my job... hehe.
Anyways, you have no idea how fucked up this can actually get. Some parts of the government actually have policies which mandate that they buy from multiple competitors. In the industry that I'm in (contractor for the air force), this gets a bit out of hand. One project that I worked on involved a jet engine which was the result of a joint-effort between two companies which have been competing against each other for the last 50 years.
Needless to say, the whole thing is an enormous clusterfuck. Neither company wants to share data with the other. Both sides use different notations, document formatting, and so forth, and neither bothered to find a middle ground. So that left our company in the middle, in sea of miscommunication and scrambled data. Add this to the pre-existing incompetence of the army at large, and christ knows how they ever managed to get this plane off the ground.
The Fed actually gives money back to the US Treasury because they make more money on interest on the US T-Bills they hold than is required to operate.
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
As I understand it, the UK has a policy that specifically mentions Free Software and Open Source, saying that should be considered equally alongside other options. But years after this policy was put in place, I've actually heard of contractors who were *ideal* for a job being told that they said all the right things in their tender, "except for one word: 'Microsoft'". This, because they said that they were keeping abreast of Open Source technologies, since the government had a policy on it!
Disclosure: I am a Cisco Channel Partner
While there are a lot that are "better" (for certain sets of features), and cheaper, Cisco has the benefit of being the incumbent. While I realize they have a pseudo-monopoly on high end internetworking gear, I cannot afford to run the risk of incompatibility for the sake of buying something else. Frame is not always frame, to use a specific example, where interoperability across the link sometimes doesn't work as well as it should.
In addition to that, Cisco TAC is the best support service I have ever worked with. I'm sure I'll get a lot of horror stories about TAC in response, but at least as a partner I've had very very few negative experiences with TAC.
How about just design ( and make available to the public ) a system design, right down to the components and open it up for bidding.
Forget choosing 'off the shelf' items and just specify EXACTALLY what is needed.
One standard system, across all levels of government. Share the production across several companies, no one gets 'preference'.
Start with open technologies like SPARC, and work from there.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If the economy was growing like it used to, you lazy bum, you wouldn't have to worry about social security
This coming at a time when employee productivity is higher than ever, when American's have the longest work-week in the entire world, yet salaries and benefits are growing slower than inflation?
Maybe you have to look at the CORPORATE PROFITS which have been skyrocketing, growing at well over 15% per year? Yeah... it's the regular working man that is fucking over the economy. You know why? Because he can't afford to buy an American car because the CEO got another raise so he can now get TWO BMWs this year in addition to spending an additional two months on his European vacation.
Not necessarily. As one familiar with public purchasing, to save a few $ some very crappy hardware (and software) have been purchased over the year. Sometimes these items are excessively buggy and shortlived, which means the entity goes shopping again before the anticipated lifespan of the items has been met. Sometimes the software is such crap that it takes more man-hours to get things done than with another package (seen happen over and over and over and over again...)
But it will increase the need for contract management and oversight. Further, if you have one or a few vendors there's only so much opportunity for finger pointing when the fertilizer hits the impeller. Complexity may be good if you're looking for jobs to make X work with Y and/or Z, because it's your specialty, but it can be a nightmare for containing expenses.
While in general I think it's a good thing that there'll be more transparency in RFP's and RFQ's I'm too jaded to believe this is automatically all good.
I couldn't agree more. Still, I think that enforcing these already extent regulations is a good thing.
I believe that the necessary follow-up would be for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) (executive branch) or perhaps even better, the US General Accounting Office (GAO) (legislative branch) to require that these fufillment contracts include specifications for interoperability, useable life and the like, including provisions for failure.
I'm certainly not planning on retiring on my Social Security money, but I'd like to get it none the less. It comes out of my paycheck twice a month, so why not want to collect eventually? We're all ardent about getting back our tax money each year, how is Social Security tax any diffrent?
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Oh man, you should see mine. I'm working on a new computing system, and I'm responsible for the install and the ops and maint of it. A competitor got the design and dev of it. It was due to be installed today, but slipped to june. I have yet to see what versions of software it is, what the software arch looks like, etc. All I know is the hardware models and the names of the app server software. Oh, and they can decide any day between now and june to move up the date. I can see a long long long week on the horizon and I can't do shit about it.
/blood sucking dod contractor computer nerd
//really low (sub 1000) slashdoter posting anon for the same reason.
Back on topic somewhat, I'd love to see some cheaper software in here. It's HARD HARD HARD to get anything into the building that's not sold by a major vendor. Doesn't matter if it's supported or now, just needs a big name. Don't even get me started about hardware. One day it's only name brand stuff, the next day it's a brand you never heard of doing some oddball thing that only they'll be able to support in 5 years. It really hurts me to watch the gov pay $50k for something it can ebay for $100.
Jeeze, I could go on and on for hours about this crap.
Whatever happened to the government requirement that systems and technology be POSIX compliant? I know I first was aware of that bent back in the early nineties, because that's when I went to work with Microsoft under the auspices of NT and its "POSIX compliance". It's also when I quit working for Microsoft when at the NT POSIX sub-system presentation (video-taped for posterity's sake) "Margaret" prefaced the presentation with the announcement (and I paraphrase), "Before we get started with the presentation, let me make clear that as far as Microsoft is concerned, we don't care about the POSIX sub-system, we don't intend to support it, and we don't intend to do anything with it in the future. It's simply a check box so we can get Government contracts."
I thought the move to POSIX compliant systems was a step in the right direction, and I'm not sure I've seen any news or publicity to the contrary. Guess something's changed...
For the record, a subsequent followup phone call to Larry Kroger at Microsoft confirmed the message in a strong way....
...on many mission critical systems. I happen to know the latest and greatest submarine Fire Control and Sonar systems run on Linux. I'd say about 90% of the stuff that runs Windows is non-mission critical. If the sub,s LAN goes down, sure it sucks, but no one is going to die as a direct result...at least not on a 688. If we lose Fire Control or Sonar, we're screwed.
I can say 100% firsthand that UNIX in government offices does not lower costs to taxpayers. In fact, it can (and has) multiplied them by a factor of up to 10. (that I have seen) Well-meaning unix admins convince directors to go over to things like unix, not realizing that there are a GREAT MANY users that do more on their computer than browse the web and write in word. Running terminal services is not always sufficient, and can be VERY expensive.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.