Using Technology To Transform Government at Robert Pogson

From the United Kingdom…
"The cost of technology has plummeted. We retendered the hosting for a small part of government recently, and the incumbent systems integrator bid £4m, while a UK SME [small/medium-sized enterprise] bid £60,000. That’s a 98.5% saving. That’s massive." The SME got the business.

see Francis Maude: digital transformation of government has begun | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

What’s going on? They are accepting FLOSS to do the lion’s share of the IT in government and small businesses to work on smaller slices of IT instead of getting some large business to slap Wintel and “partners” into a pig barn. The plan is to replace the web presence with FLOSS and not just to add a server. They are cutting through paperwork wherever they can from top to bottom.

That’s refreshing. It’s what I have been doing in schools for a decade. It works. Systems can be set up in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost if one does not have to obey restrictive EULAs, needless spider-webs of cost and complexity in IT. In one school where I replaced all but one PC used by staff and added a hundred more, the cost of licensing software was cut to $0 and the savings were available to add top-flight hardware everywhere. That system is purring today many years later. Compare that to roll-outs in large organizations that have died in the process because the organization could no longer afford the transition costs and just gave up using non-FREE “solutions”. Compare that to projects which went from concept to production in a few minutes because all that was required was to type a few commands into a GNU/Linux system instead of buying new hardware, new licences, reading tons of manuals and documenting that the authorized use of the software was not exceeded. With FLOSS, if you have the software, you have a licence for unlimited use. That’s refreshing.

Congratulations to the taxpayers of the UK. Their taxes are now getting much higher value for the money and their government’s IT is becoming responsive to the needs of users rather than the needs of global corporations to increase cash-flows.

Interestingly, there are webstats from gov.uk and they show GNU/Linux is being used by citizens too…

site-wide

OS % Views

Windows
70.06%

Linux
14.01%

Macintosh
8.98%

iOS
4.77%

Android
1.52%

OS		% Views
Windows		70.06%
Linux		14.01%
Macintosh		8.98%
iOS		4.77%
Android		1.52%

OK, the users of GNU/Linux got excited when the news broke and visited sites to check it out…, but they are there. As GOV.UK becomes more used by citizens, this should be a good source of unbiased webstats publicly available. Stay tuned. A particular site on gov.uk provides independent statistics, Salford, 3.8% GNU/Linux for November 2012. For the “hot” month of September, they show 3.14%, far above the 0.66% reported by our “friends” at NetApplications. Helpful, aren’t they?

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.