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A Public Funded "Microsoft Shop?"
An anonymous reader writes "I work at a public hospital in the computer / technical department and (amongst others) was recently outraged by an email that was sent around our department: '(XXXX) District Health Board — Information Services is strategically a Microsoft shop and when talking to staff / customers we are to support this strategy. I no longer want to see comments promoting other Operating Systems.' We have also been told to remove Firefox found on anyone's computer unless they have specific authorisation from management to have it installed under special circumstances. Now, I could somewhat understand this if I was working in a company that sold and promoted the use of Microsoft software for financial gain, but I work in the publicly / government funded health system. Several of the IT big-wigs at the DHB are seemingly blindly pro-Microsoft and seem all too quick to shrug off other, perhaps more efficient alternatives. As a taxpayer, I want nothing more than to see our health systems improve and run more efficiently. I am not foolish enough to say all our problems would be solved overnight by changing away from Microsoft's infrastructure, but I am convinced that if we took less than half the money we spend on licensing Microsoft's software alone and invested that in training users for an open source system, we would be far better off in the long run. I would very much like to hear Slashdot's ideas / opinions on this 'Strategic Direction' and the silencing of our technical opinions."
It's entirely possible that your hospital signed a deal with Microsoft...by exclusively using their products, they would get a discount.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time...
Living With a Nerd
Adoption stories and influences :-)
by eldavojohn (898314)"Every so often I see an adoption story about so-and-so taking up some open source solution and sometimes I think 'Wow, French government? Now it's really going to take off. This is it. It's time.' And then I wait. And wait. Are these stories at all positive for the project? I mean, you would think with states and governments using Ubuntu or Red Hat that it would catch on like wildfire if the savings are there so why isn't that happening? I know Microsoft sends out a lot of Wormtongues to stick in the ears of important people. Do you plan on targeting governments in a similar manner? Does/will Canonical work on making a presence in things like the EU Commissions where we've seen corporations collecting members in their pockets?"
Matt: No, we have no plans to turn Wormtongue. We do, however, have aspirations to play Frodo.
Ultimately, governments (good ones, anyway) are established to reflect the voice of their citizens. At Canonical, we believe that real, lasting change happens from the bottom up, as citizens within government and IT and those served by it clamor for change. We try to help this along by working with government organizations, including open source-friendly lobbying groups, to promote free markets and expanded choice through free and open-source software, but I personally believe that individuals will make the difference.
Change can be expensive, whether in terms of cost or bother, and so as individuals or organizations we generally try to avoid it. But people are now starting to feel enough pain - be it software costs, inefficient use of hardware, viruses and other malware, etc. - that Linux and open-source software, generally, are getting plenty of attention. The cure, in other words, now outweighs the effort of applying it. Yes, Microsoft will do its part to thwart this progress,but even so I've seen broad and ever-increasing government adoption of open source. It's just that most of it doesn't get reported.
Don't lose heart and, in particular, don't lose "voice." We're being heard. The worst thing we could do is to slacken our pace now.
Basically seems to be the answer I constantly get. "No, we're not sinking to that level. If we had that money there are a lot more productive things to spend it on."
And they're basically right. People should use open source because they choose it. Not because someone told them to. When the change comes from within and is organic, then it stays and prospers and grows.
I would not recommend that you make this suggestion to your boss unless your job is one resembling Chief of IT at your job. A public hospital really isn't a great place to experiment with open source. If you feel a need to be vocal about this just wait until IE becomes a pain due to a virus or zero day exploit and suggest Firefox as a slightly safer alternative. If you want to discuss other operating systems, you're probably best off looking for other parts of your city's public works that use Linux and asking your IT guys why your counterparts found it so successful. Or point out that if it's good enough for the DoD to use, surely it's good enough for a public hospital. I don't know what kind of scheduling and patient programs you guys are running that might only work in Microsoft. Yes, MS Exchange is a problem without a great complete open source replacement. I don't know your details. But the last thing open source needs is "John Smith died because MS Exchange stopped working on his doctor's computer. The culprit?
My work here is dung.
This is the sort of thing that should be raised with your senator or congressman. Assuming they're not in the pocket of MS already. People need to get governments round to the idea that open source is good for them. In Europe we're a bit more keen to run with such strategies and I would imagine someone ending up fired for that sort of email.
jaymz
Let the public know. I doubt many of the citizens would take a side, but you could be putting pressure on the IT directors to justify why they spend so much money.
Of course, they might contact Microsoft, who would bring out their own "independent" (read: Microsoft-funded) studies that show that, in the long run, Microsoft is cheaper than open source.
But perhaps in this time of economic trouble, a friendly journalist might take your side and decide they want to screw with the government for wasting taxpayer $$.
Good luck.
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
It seems to be a clear case of management by magazine, or management influenced by some free launch event. Make proper recommendations. Respectfully document your objections while providing alternatives. Then, in a few years, when the company is facing public scrutiny for being a financial failure, someone will come across your correspondance and you'll have the unique satisfaction of being able to say "I told 'em so."
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
it is funny you say that... Efficiency.
Open Source is great and it has its place in the world, but if you are looking for an efficient work place where IT only has one set tools to maintain and support, then mixing your OS's, software, browsers, etc., it not the way to go.
I work at Government Lab and I am in charge of a number of Enterprise Level systems. While Mac and Linux are used exclusively in my personal life and home business, Windows is what is used at the office. Not because of my love for Microsoft, but because we can globally control the desktops, the applications used on the desktops, who has access to the systems, etc. It makes our lives easier and we are more efficient at our jobs. Need all 2000 desktops patched? Fire up SMS and have it installed tonight. Need to yank access for a terminated employee? Disable their account in AD and their access to the Domain and email are now gone. Is it perfect? HELL NO! But it is a lot easier than when we had to support the minority systems of 5 flavors of Linux and 3 Mac OS's along side the Windows desktops.
As an IT Director (who came up through a 17 year career as an IT support person), I'm increasingly frustrated by IT admins who just don't see the big picture.
Using the Firefox example:
YES, it is absolutely true that Firefox is superior to IE on a user-by-user basis, in 90% of the cases.
YES, most exploits are written to take advantage of IE (or, rather, its various bloat that accumulates).
NO, the corporate management tools for Firefox are in no way comparable to what is commercially available to IE.
Without question, a *current* version of IE which is *properly patched* is superior (security-wise) to a 6 month old, unpatched version of Firefox.
I'm able to control my IE deployments down to a microscopic level, all from a single scree (and tied in to many of my other deployed applications). I'm not able to do that with Firefox. I'll gut it out and take my chances with the IE that I can control (including to blackhole communications at a moments notice if there's a problem), rather than Firefox which I cannot.
The first 8 years of my life were spend as a CAD systems admin (Unix systems). I run Squid. I love open source. But don't even begin to tell me that because you're looking at "what browser is superior for Joe's computer" that you can plan a corporate infrastructure.
I basically saw this type of situation in the post as well.
I worked for the Government for a long while and it was the same type of environment, but locked down more for security than anything else. While their were OSS alternatives all over the place, we made due with the tools that had already been audited.
Owning my own business now, and knowing a bit about HIPAA (father-in-law works for ACS-HCS as a HIPPA specialist), I can see why the "pro-msft" face looks that way. They're attempting to decrease their software footprint - and the vulnerabilities that come with them.
Is Firefox more safe than IE8? Possibly, maybe... But if they just have to plug a few holes in one system vs the next with more, it makes like easier - and safer for everyone involved.
I think the real question is: Why are you running in a HIPAA environment with users that have permissions to install software? Now that's crazy.
As for the "Support Microsoft" attitude, I think there are bigger things happening than you know of(actually, I know it). The feelings and grumblings of the employees can certainly affect how a bid goes for anything. If you bring in a vendor and all the IT guys are pounding on said vendor - you think the guy is going to be nice and find ways for you all to save money - or pad his wallet due to how you're treating him? Microsoft has some pretty interesting stuff in the works that you may not know about. Is it the greatest company that ever was? Nope, but it's OS' run a lot of your equipment, servers, etc. If you idiots do nothing but moan about how bad MSFT is while the hospital is considering moving to Win7, Server 2008 or considering one of the larger projects - what do you think the administration is going to do about your attitudes before bringing MSFT in? I'd slap you around too.
If you really want an eye-opening experience, I suggest you work for an all government program where you have no rights, you can't use any software not approved by the gov, etc.
Crying about your situation isn't going to get any sympathy from me. I've been in worse, and know all about the security problems on Hospital WANs. Shut up, fix your network and get it running at 100%, then ask to bring in one system to compare to a working, security complaint workstation/network. Moaning about how crappy something is when it's not fully patched, has 8 years of crap on it and has too many GPO's that conflict with each other is going to get an eye roll from anyone that knows anything.
It's still an IT shop. If I had made choices in my job (which I run a large section of IT where I am so I do) and some young dude was going around undermining my decisions (like say telling the customers how my choices suck and there's better stuff out there) I might send an email like that as well.
Not everyone agrees with everyone. But there is still a food-chain at most jobs. And you might not agree with management, but it doesn't give you the right to undermine them either. Not saying that happened here, but it looks like a good possibility.
Father in law = HIPAA sepcialist YOU being a HIPAA specialist.
Having an browser installed does not make a PC any less or more secure, it has been proven recently that most versions of IE have major vulnerabilities (just ask Google).
Most likely the director only knows M$ so it must be best right? Me thinks the memo came because many people want to use Macs and there main software does not support it.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
This proposes "takling about OSS alternatives", a move which has been explicitly forbidden by the memo. But depending on your personal situation (how much money do you have on the side, do you have wife & kids to feed?), you may just boldly ignore the memo, and continue business as usual. If you confronted, ask for a written statement. If you don't get any, you're fine. If you do, you've got excellent fodder for another Slashdot story, and for the press.
I can think of at least one reason why this would be policy, HIPAA. It is not very hard to get a Windows Domain to not allow IE on any computer in the Domain to go to sites that would allow people to violate HIPAA. It may be possible to do with Firefox, but not as easily (I've never needed to restrict Firefox on a Domain wide basis, so I don't know how hard it would be, but the techniques that lock down IE don't lock down Firefox).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Take it to the politicians who oversee your hospital and provide funding and ultimately governance.
My guess is that Democrats would be the most likely to care about this, either from a public interest perspective, a conflict of interest or possibly even kickback basis, or even a freedom of speech basis (yes, you don't have freedom of speech at work but the rules are often more fluid when you work for the government).
I'd like for Republicans to care about this from a government-money-being-wasted basis, but AFAICT the general trend seems to be Republicans generally being in favor of corporate alignment, sweetheart deals, executive preference and suppressing workers.
The right politician on this case might actually put the fear of God in the executives responsible for this.
As much as your idea makes sense, the chances are his superiors will refuse because it's against policy or it will be seen as insubordination if the higher-ups become aware. They can easily claim that despite his local cost savings he is obstructing the architectural and strategic plans and increasing long term costs. A very expensive consultant report will agree with what the higher-ups want and that'll be the end of that and possibly his career. The only real moral leverage he has is that this is public money, a private company could do whatever the hell they like and it'd be nobody's business how deep they're in bed with Microsoft. But that doesn't mean that it's some employee-run collective that is managed differently from any other company, if he wants to use that he has to awaken the public and force them to reconsider at the policy level. Otherwise he'll just be as any other employee in the private sector ignoring management decisions.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's not even a typical "MS shop" attitude. In the past, I worked in a company that's a "Microsoft Gold Certified Partner", and while MS products were predominant on the corpnet - AD, IIS, SharePoint, Exchange etc (because they came cheap with the deal, and did offer productivity improvements) - the company products itself were still only 50% .NET-based, the other 50% using Java/J2EE. We also had some on-site client hosting running Linux and, IIRC, Solaris for those Java projects.
Nor was there the kind of attitude displayed by email in TFS. I mean, sure, when you deal with customers, and you are on the team that works on a project written using MS-based tech, it's not exactly wise to criticize them, since you're effectively criticizing your product indirectly. And this isn't any different regardless of platform in question.
But in internal discussions, it was not a taboo subject at all. And even in .NET projects, FOSS libraries were used where available for a given task (NHibernate, Castle, SharpZipLib - just to name a few).
At my place we've got a bunch of MS stuff but the management and my colleagues all seem to be open source wannabe's. When I got here, the place was in a terrible state, the Terminal Servers were bluscreening multiple times a week, the file servers were thrashing constantly, basically our major incident board was lit up like a Christmas tree. Every time something went wrong, everyone would be "Bloody Microsoft, never works!!!!, viruses, malware, blue screen of death LOLLLZZZ!!!!"
So anyway I've set to work straightening everything out (nothing magical, mainly patches, firmware etc) and we've not had a terminal server bluescreen since July '09, and the helpdesk has received exactly 2 calls this afternoon, one was for a LOB app error, and the other was a user training issue. It's been this way for months. I can't actually remember the last time I've seen a helpdesk call directly attributable to the Microsoft platform. Now we're only a small org of 80 servers worldwide, so I know this run of good fortune probably wouldn't scale to some of the badass networks you lot are running, but it works for us, and works really well.
You would think this would have earned at least a little credibility on my part? Nah. I'm still the office whipping boy because I happen to think MS prods are a strategically good idea for the business. Every time something isn't working, they still straight away blame patches, Microsoft, a virus - when demonstrably the cowboy coding of our integration engineer, or a network issue or one of our LOB apps has got a bug. Pisses me off no end. We've actually had more issues with HP drivers/firmware than we've had with the MS stack, which surprised even me!
We're looking at some border gateway stuff right now, and the boss is rejecting anything without iPhone and Mac compatibility, even though it accounts for under 4% of our userbase! I'm also trying to virtualise some of the estate, but am hitting a brick wall because he wants to use anything but Microsoft, which we don't have the skills in house to properly administer. Insanity, IMO! Then again, he does insist on referring to our server cupboard as a 'datacenter' in front of vendors, I really cringe when he does that!
So anyway, don't always count on the fact that even if you come in and make all the right moves that you'll get any credit whatsoever. People's ingrained beliefs are hard to change, even when they have been proven wrong smack bang in front of their faces.
If medicine were ever perfected, we'd all be the same.
No, the purpose of Ask Slashdot is to troll the userbase with the dumbest and/or most inciteful question possible and get as many pageviews and ad impressions on the back of that as they can. Oh, sorry. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
[FUCK BETA]
Though I was working in a private high school, there were a lot of factors that came into the ultimate decision to switch the entire system from Novell NetWare + SuSE (for backend services) + Windows to an entire Windows shop. For one, there were a lot of high powered donors who we couldn't really question, since some of them really WERE shills for Microsoft and basically gave us free licenses for all of our server operating systems. Second, we brought in consultants, including a consulting project manager who was playing it safe (he was also heavily promoting Microsoft and proprietary products over anything else we could draft up as a solution; I kept hearing "best practices" when talking about Microsoft products, and "not best practice" for any OSS software.) Third, I was the sole person in the department (out of four) who was comfortable with the UNIX command line interface. Finally, fourth, I had a direct superior who had just taken over as IT Director and didn't want to rock the boat too much.
I riled a lot of people up before I left, and I admit, I fucked up in my politicking. After fighting with the project manager (and on a much smaller level, with my direct boss), I was able to get a grand total of two FreeBSD boxes and one Debian backup box (out of twenty servers.) When I decided to leave, the fate of all three were in question, despite them providing internal services that we simply didn't have (network/host monitoring, centralized syslog, backup.)
I tried to suck it up, though what ultimately made me leave was the irrationality of possibly dismantling services for no reason other than the fact that other people didn't understand UNIX (I made the business case of all three servers and didn't implement them simply because they were FOSS.)
So I think you have three options:
1) Play it safe.
2) Try to rock the boat and see how far you get.
3) Leave ASAP.
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
I can almost relate with this point of view.
I work for a Los Angeles County public facility, with a total of 2 IT staff, supporting 400-500 employees at 3 sites. Yes... thats TWO. there are no other technically educated employees here. This is almost an impossible scenario to function in, but its all made possible.. by microsoft.
Active Directory pulling everything together, users/servers, as well as high end utilities that let us deploy to users with ease and 5mins of training (or packet shape, or fine control group policies). Not to mention the availability and low cost to hire temporary contractors that support MS OS's.
It does get on my nerves when the mac monkeys or linux lovers promote other OS's that dont even begin to meet the functionality and versatility that Microsoft has made possible. Macs are pretty, i get it... leave em at home. Linux.. i know.. its super stable... leave it at home.
Just have to accept that in some business environments, working smarter and easier is far greater than a pretty computer case, or open source that requires training by IT staff you dont have to spare.
I've been fighting a battle on Ft Knox to use LAMP for the new website. Ever since i heard Whitehouse.gov was using Drupal i've been interested. Redhat, Apache, mysql, and PHP all have certificates of networthiness and are approved for purchase / download (with correct major version numbers).
The problem is coming from DOIM/NEC the post network managers. They think using PHP and mysql and especially linux would increase the surface attack area. So, i compromised for just php and ms-sql.. still having problems there. Bascially, anything non-MS and it "presents a security threat". They have such an entrenched point of view and merely carrying forward on inertia. Even if the software is DOD approved and vetted, they recoil in fear.
If you are reading this and from DOIM/NEC, don't hesitate to call 194th BDE S3 and correct me. Ask for Carnes.
Anyways, to your point. MS is receiving a disproportionate amount of tax payer money because of FUD. Talking about it might reach the right people.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Back a couple of years ago, I was IT coordinator at a public school district. At the time, we were aggressively rolling out new computers, and we had a mixed environment of Macs and PCs. I had always used Open Source software on my personal computer, and on my office computers at work. Being a poorly-funded school district, which had just spent a considerable ammount of our budget on the new machines, I advocated the use of Free Open Source software as a way to bring functionality to the users while keeping costs down. Prior to this, I had been making sure OpenOffice.org was installed on all of our machines, alongside MS Office (even though we didn't have enough licenses for MS Office as it was, Management told me to "shut up and install it anyway, not like they are going to audit our little district"). I started a pilot project in the Elementary school where I only made available OpenOffice on computer lab machines, and provided teachers with basic training on how to use it. It worked fine, and there were few complaints. I did this with approval from Administration. After a successful school year running an OpenOffice-only Elementary school, I decided that I had sufficient data, cost/benefit analysis, etc, to make the push to do the same at the High School. I was given go-ahead from the Administration to make both Office suites available, and to encourage use of OpenOffice. I did not anticipate what would happen next... students and teachers started to complain about the new Office software, and that the district was being "cheap" and that "no one in the real world uses OpenOffice". Despite me pointing out the advantages of the new software, and pointing out other instances of Governments and Businesses using the software, it didn't matter. I was even providing free CDs with the OpenOffice software on it for students to take home and install, and there were several students who were grateful for this. It increased their ability to do homework - at home! Alas despite my best efforts, with the best interests of the students and taxpayers in mind, the Administration reversed their decision. They announced that starting immediately, we would only be using Microsoft Office software, and that they would be diverting funds to purchase enough licenses to install it on every computer in the whole district, including our successful Elementary school implementation. I protested that this was a waste of funds, especially in the Elementary school, where we had no problems, and that it wouldn't be good for the users there to change ships in the middle of the school year. So I was told that I was to immediately begin installing Office 2007 on all district computers, and removing any OpenOffice software. Guess what? A few weeks later I was fired. My grounds for dismissal? Insubordination. Installing un-approved OpenOffice software on district computers. Failure to remove OpenOffice software from district computers. I protested and said that I didn't have enough time to make the requested changes, as we have over 500 computers, and I'm the sole IT person. I explained that I have to make new computer images, and test, and deploy those images, and that can't be done overnight (although I usually did my ghosting overnight when no one was there /pun). Alas, they wanted me out of the door, because I dared to think differently, and because "the Open Source software you installed was not good for the school."
And the funny thing is, this is the same Administration that adopted an official policy (with little input from me) that all school computers must run Firefox. To this day at that school, users aren't allowed to run IE. At all. I believe that started from people complaining that our Google Apps and Google Email systems didn't work well with IE. No one complains about Firefox, everyone loves it, and that seems to be what drives the school board. They don't respond well to people complaining, and unfortunately, the people complaining about the OpenOffice software were outnumbering the people co
I have to agree strongly with this last part. 'build a pilot operation at home'.
Back many years ago I worked for a company that was a Microsoft shop. We built networks, apps, websites all using MS products.
I started using linux at home and after a few months of working on it came in telling them that this linux stuff was really stable. The answer was always 'No, No , No We can only trust MS'. I'd go away and come back and tell them you know this MySQL stuff is fast, you know I mimicked that last app we had and I got twice as many transactions per minute vs SQL Server. 'No, No, No, we can only trust MS and Oracle'. I'd go away and come back and tell them you know this PHP and perl stuff works really well. I redid our latest app using PHP and perl and it works just fine, maybe we should take a look at this Apache on linux thing 'No, No, No we can only trust MS IIS '. So I went away.
Then one week a patch came out and screwed up a app that was written in VB. Then the following week we were hit with a storm of viruses. Then we had to pull developers off of projects to help the guys who did maintenance. Then there was the realization that network admin and developers have a completely different skill set. But this went on patches breaking things and worms and viruses. After about 2 months of this everyone was tired and I was being asked about this linux stuff and open source solutions.
After 3 months of testing and a lot of hard work, we had moved all new development over to linux and all of our codebase was being tested on ASP on linux. First the IIS servers went , then the SQL Server, then the PDC servers and we became a linux house. We lost some people who just couldn't do without their MS shiny baubles and always wanted to return to those days. Including my boss. Guess who became the head of IT. Yep, and don't think I don't know that there are technicians who go home and practice with their AD server every night. (I've been known to do that also). But in these last few years we have sales people call trying to sell us stuff and they are always incredulous that we have no MS Servers. I keep waiting for the day when a sales rep won't be shocked to find that out.
But anyway you have to work with the internals to learn it. Just to give you an idea, I don't hire people because they have updated there home desktop to the latest version of Ubuntu or Fedora for the last 2 years. Red Hat or Canonical may hire you, but good luck with that.