Go Open, Obama and Save Us Some Money!

The Obama campaign was not afraid to defy the rules -- because it had to. The only way for Obama to succeed against two political veterans was to play a different game. Now in office, President Obama has the opportunity to take the federal government in a new direction as well.

The Obama campaign web site that revolutionized online politics was created with web tools that are not owned by any company. They are open source. The new administration web sites -- www.whitehouse.gov, and www.recovery.gov -- are also crafted with open, free tools.

Obama should direct the federal government to use hosted and free tools across all branches of government. This will save the government a LOT of money and make it much easier to share this info on the web.

Instead of using Microsoft Office, if government documents were created in Openoffice.org, Google Docs (which is not open source, but is free) or other hosted and open sites, we could all get access right away to important government information. Microsoft Office no longer makes sense in a world that is sharing information on the web rather than in print.

Why should the American taxpayer give Microsoft $400 per every user in the U.S. government for the use of Office? That is hundreds of millions of dollars that we can use for lots of better projects.

How about Microsoft Vista? This operating system has one main function -- to kill productivity. It freezes, crashes and does just about everything except let you get your work done. Why should we pay for a product that does not work? Apple products are great, but they cost even more than Microsoft software.

Open source and hosted tools are being used in the biggest of companies in the US and across the world. Many governments have now issued mandates to use open source tools where possible. The UK, France and Finland are three countries that have a preference for open source tools. The UK just announced its preference for open source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7910110.stm

The French Gendarmerie has saved 70% of its IT budget moving to open platforms. You can read about their savings here: http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-gendarmerie-saves-millions-with-open-desktop-and-web-applications

While the new federal Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is suspended under a cloud of suspicion, the CTOs of every major branch of government can move ahead with this initiative right away. The logic is simple and the savings are significant.

Open Sesame and Show me the Money!

Comments

[dnddays]

OpenOffice is horrible. It's only selling point IS that it's free. And, the last thing our government should do is go open source OS and allow foreign governments and terrorists -- not to mention ordinary hackers -- access to the source code for every computer in Washington. Windows might be not be impenetrable, but it's certainly not as vulnerable as Linux.

As for your comments on Vista, I don't know what decade you're from but I haven't had a windows system crash on me since Windows Millennium and virtually never have one freeze on me. If it's crashing on you, then in all likelihood the problem came from a user and not the OS. Vista's drawback was its UAC, high resource demands and compatibility issues. Other than that it's rock solid.

Open office and web applications are fine in most non-vital government computers, but using Linux is not. Let's not compromise our security to save a few dollars.

[wagadog]

already already already!

[wagadog]

Much of our open source software -- starting with BSD Unix and X windows -- was developed with government grants (most notably through DARPA and DoD) throughout the 70's, 80's and 90's. The national labs and FFRDCs use FOSS almost exclusively. The internet started out as ARPANET, developed primarily with federal grants, and was then extended to NSFnet for 10 years before it was opened up to commercial use. In response to worm and virus and directed hacking threats, the NSA developed SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux).

The taxpayer has already paid for a large portion of the development of these systems, and the real expertise in the development and deployment of these systems already is already well-developed in the federal public sector.

Consequently, it is an absolute travesty that anyone in the federal government feels they need to pay Microsoft Corporation or anyone else to help them with their computer systems.

Ubuntu is so easy to install, use and maintain that -- well, even my mom, a granny 7 times over, uses it for her main desktop system. It is so similar to Windows (and far more secure, and far less bloated) that the "retraining" time is minimal for office staff. Furthermore, the Xubuntu disto is designed to run on older systems, obviating the planned obsolescence and need to replace hardware so often that plagues Microsoft users.

[dnddays]

Ubuntu is great, is less bloated, but it's no more secure than Windows and certainly less secure than OS X Leopard. I dual boot XP and Linux, but I wouldn't install it in on any computers containing government secrets, although I know some people who would love to see that happen even if only to hack in and find out what really happened at Roswell.

BTW, grats on a Mom that uses Linux. My mom can't even check email lol.