Slashdot Mirror
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."
Perhaps this will even open the way for Linux and other open-source options being chosen over Microsoft and the like.
The government buys what its contractors tell it to. Thus, the only open source will get into the government is when the IBM's, EDS's and Oracle's of the world start pushing open source (or at least partial open source) solutions to the government. While there are many smart people in the government who like open source, they rarely make the spending decisions (and face it, MS and other proprietary vendors court the decision makers). The key is to raise awareness among the PHBs and to get the solution providers to push open source.
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...)
The increased competition will lower the cost to taxpayers (though the money will still get spent somewhere)
What you say? If it still gets spent then it did nothing for taxpayers.
and the wider spread of contracts will help competitors to chip away at the dominance of Microsoft and Intel."
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
AMD: Armageddon Nuclear Devices.
I know that not being "brand name" as far as components go is a good thing, but if they keep buying Dell, this is nothing more than an empty promise.
Problems are like gifts, it's better to give than to receive
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
even open the way for Linux and other open-source options being chosen over Microsoft
...maybe they'll choose MacOSX I mean even according to Thurrott you'll see that Tiger is one impressive cat and besides, MacOSX is "slightly" more secure than Windows
I can see a $499 Mac Mini filling the needs of a lot of government agencies. And it's immunity to viruses and spyware is a big bonus.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I'm all for the government opening up it's purchasing process in commodity markets such as PC purchases, but who is going to be making these decisions for the government? Consider this scenario:
Engineer: We need to purchase 2 Cisco 7206VXR routers for our internet T3s.
Procurement: I'm sorry, you can't specify the brand. I found this nice Linksys router for you. It's much cheaper.
Given the level of (in)compentancy in goverment offices, do you really think that the above scenario is so unlikely?
P.S. I'm aware that Cisco owns Linksys. That just adds to the irony IMHO.
My UID is the product of 2 primes.
Stick my percentage back in my Social Security account please.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
I knew holding my eMachine stock would pay off.
If you think
And some of them are the brightest people you may ever meet. Don't be such a bigot. I've had to interact with man federal agencies over the years and quite a few of them know exactly what they are doing. The problems often lie in the direction of contractors who come in and technically meet the letter of a contract, but in spirit leave something lacking, which allows overruns to happen.
I once had a very amusing talk with someone at the US Dept of Education. He knew what we needed to submit and what the issue I was raising meant, but try to get the contractor to understand it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Old spec:
Microsoft Word 2003
New spec:
Word processor which supports the following requirements:
{insert long list of specifications at least one of which is covered by a Microsoft patent}
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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!
Isn't it amazing what a waste of money our government is? No politician would ever consider actually NOT SPENDING money they don't need. Tax freedom day falls on April 17 this year (after which, proportionally, you will spend the rest of the year working for yourself rather than the government).
We went to war with Britain over 5% taxes. Today, we're practically a socialist country. Ever wonder why the IRS takes your money automatically and invisibly? We'd never support such ridiculous taxes if we had to send them a check every month.
Ok, sorry for the rant. I feel better now.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
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 ----
Who are you and what have you done with Dubya?!
"...having long complained of the unholy marriage between the Fed and Intel." ;)
Shhh. With the current administration, that's an "unholy civil union." And don't think you can just talk about it that way either. We'll not discuss how a federal institution and a chip maker are living in sin, thank you very much
Ignore the rantings above. Poster is an idiot.
If I recognize the brand, that means the company could afford advertising, which means the products are over priced.
Or it could mean that the company is attempting to sell to a large enough audiance to take advantage of economies of scale, thus being able to give you a cheaper product (even with the advertising cost) than if they'd turned out only a small number of units w/o an advertising budget.
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....
Probably not, but that has no logical bearing on the discussion.
The problem with any software which attempts to interoperate with a proprietary data format is that the proprietary format is designed to exclude that interoperation. Don't blame the other software for that! The same is true whether the other software is free or encumbered.
You're right, it is about your tax dollars, and mine, and our children's. It's an egregiously bad idea for governments, operating with public funds in the public trust, to allow themselves to get locked into any proprietary data format. At best, that data, our data, becomes hostage to proprietary interest. And as you've clearly illustrated, the consequences can be severe.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
...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.
Today, we're practically a socialist country.
Either you have no idea what socialism means, or you're wilfully misusing the term.
The US is presently at the opposite pole from socialism, you'd do better to choose fascism (in the sense of govt being close to corporations) if you wish to exaggerate. Taxes are currently relatively low in the US. I still wouldn't want to live there though, because healthcare and education don't seem to be government priorities (relative to the UK for example). Military spending, in contrast, is at an all time high. Not all government is bad, contrary to received wisdom on this website.
In a past life I worked for a data processing equipment manufacture. Our top of the line machine had a direct competitor. The competition sold their competing model for about 10% - 20% less then we sold ours.
In our office we had a salesman who sold to federal, state, city governments who had to deal with bidding. The law is that when bidding apples to apples the lowest bid must be taken. When the government makes a purchase, they write a request for bid, specify what they want, send it to all their suppliers and take the lowest bid amount.
He had an "in" with his accounts and they all wanted our machine over the competition. However, with the competition selling for less, legally they were bound to purchase the lower cost alternative.
The got around this in how they wrote the request for bid. They would take the manufacturing and option specifications for each machine and write the bid in such a way as to include items that only our equipment had.
This could be a simple as including a second power switch that we had but the competition didn't have. I.E. Must be able to turn on/off equipment from either the front or rear. They would load the request for bid with such items so that the competition would not be able to quote apples to apples.
When the bids returned, even though the competition was a lower cost, they could reject the bid because it did not include all the specifications listed. They could then purchase our machine even though it more expensive.
The difference between the two machines were like Toyota vs. Honda. Both equally able to do the job. Strictly speaking, they should have taken the lower cost of the two. But when they had a preference they just worked around the bidding laws. It was common practice and common knowledge and that was 15 years ago.