Re: OGC OSS report (was) Re: NHS/IA revisionism
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Tim Churches wrote: | | So for large oragnisations, the necessary support infrastructure to swap | mission critical operations to Linux and other FOSS solutions is already | there, I feel, or just about there. People just don't realise it. | I think a lot of people do realize it inside the established IT operations. There are some systems vendors doing a better job then others with linux, but that is changing as well. ~ I think it's people in the small to medium category that don't realize the range of support available. Typically what will happen in this market is when their application VAR (Value added reseller, i.e. the company that makes your billing software or your EHR package) makes the move to linux, they will. I saw this happen when the mini-computer VAR market of the 70's and 80's switched nearly wholesale to Microsoft LAN's and servers by the 90's. It's starting to trickle over to Linux, made easier by running on the same hardware! I have experience RedHat supporting RedHat enterprise linux and I will soon have experience with IBM and SuSE support from Novell. RedHat support was worth renewing the support contracts for but our current system vendors hadn't ramped up to what we needed from them. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFBglQUY+HG7UEwVGERAmIqAKCUTJcra/F5xVt0Gj7eE6SBWFNkygCgo6lY Zw65+qm9h9HnjeHHV47L6lY= =5sOt -END PGP SIGNATURE-
RE: OGC OSS report (was) Re: NHS/IA revisionism
From: Joseph Dal Molin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 29 October 2004 6:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: OGC OSS report (was) Re: NHS/IA revisionism OGC report published now what will the NHS say on their web site? The software could generate significant savings, according to the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?docid=2190#finalreport BBC coverage: UK government departments moved a step closer to using open-source operating systems such as Linux after a study found that they were viable products. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3960025.stm The NHS will just say that the OCG report focussed on typical government administrative functions, and that health care delivery is significantly different from other forms of government administration. They'll be correct, of course - it is different. However it doesn't logically follow that a FOSS approach has no utility in health. But that is what they will imply. Here in the state of New South Wales (Australia), a Dept of Commerce tender for all-of-govt contracts for Linux software and support services (especially the latter) closes today. When the tender results are announced in a month or two, it will make it considerably easier for government departments and instrumentalities, including health authorities and public hospitals, to deploy Linux and linux-based systems in mission-critical roles (where 24x7 in-depth support infrastructures are a sine qua non). Tim C Adrian Midgley wrote: On Tuesday 26 October 2004 21:48, Tim Churches wrote: Richard Grainger, the head of the NHS IA Certainly he is in charge, but of the NPfIT which is esentially taking over from the NHSIA. The IA was established when the Information Management Group (IMG) was dismembered into the IPU (Information Policy Unit - a part of the DH - Department _of_ Health) about 1992 in order to make it more difficult to make large mistakes rapidly in a monolithic centrally directed organisation. 1992 was therefore the time of the last big spasm in NHS IT policy, and gave rise to the plans to introduce X.400 email systems running in a virtually private network. X.400 went away last year or the year before, never having really worked, and having been introduced in about 1999 or so (I forget). contracts being offered. That probably means that open source won't get a much of a look in. Adrian, is that a correct surmise? There is expressed the theory that after it all goes wonderfully well for us, the rest of you will buy it and we will share the profits into the Exchequer. It sounds like a sales-talk to me but I know little of such things. There has never been any prohibition on the use of open source software, however one of the quid pro quos for the deal - if unspoken - seems to be that the developers get the onwership and control of the results... so as to make it easier for them to extract large amounts of money from the rest of the world which they will share with teh NHS and .gov.uk Who knows. Perhaps it might work. The developments in quantum computing seem interesting, they also operate as I understand it, in an arbitrarily large number of parallel universes.
Re: OGC OSS report (was) Re: NHS/IA revisionism
On Thursday 28 October 2004 13:08, Tim Churches wrote: Here in the state of New South Wales (Australia), a Dept of Commerce tender for all-of-govt contracts for Linux software and support services (especially the latter) closes today. When the tender results are announced in a month or two, it will make it considerably easier for government departments and instrumentalities, including health authorities and public hospitals, to deploy Linux and linux-based systems in mission-critical roles (where 24x7 in-depth support infrastructures are a sine qua non). Yes. A huge gap continues to be having some structure or fractal organisation that allows the Open Source/Libre community to generate a credible support operation. The difference is I think less than it might seem, because as time has gone by and I have seen a few things I have come to regard the large corporations not as they project themselves - monoliths of stable content and nature - but as transient clouds which hire and fire, reform and rebadge, coalesce and fragment, assimilate and divide so as to provide whatever it is that the customer has convinced themselves is essential. So apart from convincing the customers that what they want is Open Source, which is a process moving with something like historical inevitability, we need a few very sparse skeletons into which we can fit at need. But in the absence of those emergent structures, keep coding and talking and using FLOSS by preference, and we will get there. -- Adrian Midgley Open Source software is better GP, Exeter http://www.defoam.net/
RE: OGC OSS report (was) Re: NHS/IA revisionism
Adrian Midgley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday 28 October 2004 13:08, Tim Churches wrote: Here in the state of New South Wales (Australia), a Dept of Commerce tender for all-of-govt contracts for Linux software and support services (especially the latter) closes today. When the tender results are announced in a month or two, it will make it considerably easier for government departments and instrumentalities, including health authorities and public hospitals, to deploy Linux and linux-based systems in mission-critical roles (where 24x7 in-depth support infrastructures are a sine qua non). Yes. A huge gap continues to be having some structure or fractal organisation that allows the Open Source/Libre community to generate a credible support operation. The difference is I think less than it might seem, because as time has gone by and I have seen a few things I have come to regard the large corporations not as they project themselves - monoliths of stable content and nature - but as transient clouds which hire and fire, reform and rebadge, coalesce and fragment, assimilate and divide so as to provide whatever it is that the customer has convinced themselves is essential. Yes. We runn Red Hat Enterprise Linux on several of our more important servers - what you pay for is essentially a support contract, rather than a software license (since it is all GPLed except for the Red Hat name and logos embedded throughout it). When we have required tech support, the phone is variously answered by quite know;edgeable people in Brisbane, San Fransico and mostly Manila. However, should we ever need someone on-site, there are similarly trained people a few minutes away in Sydney. In other words, they have a global cloud of support staff, linked via a shared, Web-based support information system. It all works very satisfactorily. Novell has a similar, but even better developed distributed support infrastructure, which is why their entry into the Linux support market is very welcome. And there is also IBM, but I have no direct experience with them. HP also offers combined support for various Linux distros running on its hardware, as do some of the other hardware providers. Increasingly the support is not just for the bare operating system, but for much of the stuff bundled in the distros, such as open source databases, email and Web infrastructure and for desktop deployments, office applications. So for large oragnisations, the necessary support infrastructure to swap mission critical operations to Linux and other FOSS solutions is already there, I feel, or just about there. People just don't realise it. However, such support does cost some money - not outrageously expensive, but not small change. For small-to-medium sized organisations, I think that there may still be a significant gap in cheaper support for Linux and FOSS offered by smaller, more local IT firms. What really needs to happen is for these firms to form consortia to provide after-hours support, in the same way that GPs often form consortia to provide after-hours coverage to each others' practices on a rotating basis. Tim C So apart from convincing the customers that what they want is Open Source, which is a process moving with something like historical inevitability, we need a few very sparse skeletons into which we can fit at need. But in the absence of those emergent structures, keep coding and talking and using FLOSS by preference, and we will get there. -- Adrian Midgley Open Source software is better GP, Exeter http://www.defoam.net/
Re: NHS/IA revisionism
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Joseph Dal Molin wrote: ... Colin Smith. In the fall of 2001 Nigel Bell, the then CEO of the NHS IA gave the following interview: http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/news/1125702 Joseph, Thanks for the reference. Reading this article, it does look like the NHS seriously considered open source. It may be valuable to document all the bits and pieces, especially given the risk of the billion pound effort to boil the ocean from above From the article: - begin quote But open source is not a universal panacea, and there's still a place for proprietory software. The Department of Health is currently negotiating a ?20m deal with commercial vendors including Microsoft, said Bell. In simple terms we are sitting on the fence, and are not going to be committing ourselves either way because we don't need to. - end quote My interpretation is that NHS decided to fund proprietary software at the expense of open source software (for obvious reasons). With that decision made, they realized sitting on the fence gives a public appearance of confusion and thus pulled Colin Smith's paper. Rather than blaming NHS, I give them credit for valuing and publishing Colin Smith's paper and seriously considering open source in the first place (and also sponsoring OSHCA 2001). Just because NHS got off the fence and gave money to proprietary vendors this time, it does not mean they won't make a different decision next time. Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
RE: NHS/IA revisionism
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Tim Churches wrote: ... Richard Grainger, the head of the NHS IA, spoke at a seminar that I attended in Melbourne about 6 months ago. I asked him about open source, and his response was that he had no objections, provided there were open source organisations who could tender and then deliver on projects with 18 month delivery schedules and budgets of several hundred million pounds. ... the impression that, armed with the 6 billion pound budgetary promise from Tony Blair, he felt that he could, if not boil the ocean, at least part the sea Tim, Unfortunately, it may be easier to boil the ocean than to acquire/produce open source software. - that is, exert a great deal of influence on and be able to extract much, much better deals out of existing commercial vendors and system integrators. Whatever influence 6 billion pounds can buy - it is clearly not _perceived_ to be enough to buy an equivalent open source deployment. Some organizations (e.g. NHS) clearly knows the value of having an open source infrastructure - but they may not be willing to pay for those open source advantages (with their time and money). ... Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
100+ year perspective, was RE: NHS/IA revisionism
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Tim Churches wrote: From: Andrew Ho [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Just because NHS got off the fence and gave money to proprietary vendors this time, it does not mean they won't make a different decision next time. I suspect that next time will be at least a decade hence, given the scale of investment and the long-term nature of the contracts which the NHS is now entering into. Tim, A decade to establish an infrastructure that can continue to be used for several hundred years is not bad at all. As UK NHS deploys its new proprietary system, we will continue to learn from this experience and mature our open source / free systems. Some governments (e.g. Brazil) have already announced funding for open source health software project. Who knows, with consultants like Joseph and Colin, it may take less than ten years for the UK NHS to change direction. Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
