Re: A Breath of Fresh Air

On Sun, 2004-06-06 at 08:53, Greg Madden wrote:

> On Sat, 2004-06-05 at 23:38, W.D.McKinney wrote:
> > Red this note.
> > http://www.webmink.net/2004/06/fisl-government-that-gets-it.htm
> >
> > This is something that I wish was the thrill here in the U.S.
> >
> > Dee
> >
>
> Porto Alegre, Brazil, DebConf 4 - The 5th annual Debian Conference was
> held there May 26-June 2nd. The World Social Forum held there in 2003.
>
> To bad Gov Murkowski doesn't push the FOSS idea as a new industry for
> Alaska. Aklug can do only so much :)

The opinion expressed below is mine and not representative of the state
of Alaska in any way. Oh yeah, I'm also on a 15 min. break.

The state is working toward moving IT support into an enterprise
environment. The idea is that this is going to save the state money.
Currently each departments runs thier own IT section. As part of this
reform functioning work groups have evolved to evaluate and recommend
options to the governing counsel of ETS, appropriately titled the
Enterprise Technology Management group (ETM). As far as I know ETM is
made up of a handful of current IT department managers. ETM takes
recommendations from the FWG and then sets a "standard" for the state.
Topics include File & Print serving, desktop functionality, backups,
security, etc... There is more that goes on in this process but this is
the main outline.

I believe there is a real opportunity to challenge the ETM and
functioning work groups to seriously look at Open Source. I am by no
means a "player" in the future of the states technology. Regardless, I
still take the time to let my boss know what is available in the open
source arena. I have also emailed a copy of the migration guide that
the government of Munich used in evaluating open source to a member of
the ETM. He replied two days later encouraging other members of the ETM
to review the section on "financial analysis".

We could all do something. I would bet my last dollar that we have the
talent within the state to design, deploy, and maintained an Open Source
infrastructure. I guess I'm a little passionate about the issue. I
keep an eye on the editorials all the time wondering when someone is
going to write in challenging the Governor and the state in general to
look at Open Source solutions. Perhaps we can all take part in writing
to your representative or other forums to bring this issue to light.

Tim Jordan

One last note. Does AKLUG do any voulenteer work for non-profit
organizations?

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Received on Mon Jun 7 08:54:33 2004