Nice view on the use of opensource software. Especially in the public
sector. I think more states will follow suit if this becomes successful.
in_flu_ence
Steven Shelton wrote:
As you are no doubt aware, Michigan is currently (and, it seems,
perpetually) facing a budget crisis that has resulted in deep cuts to
state programs and the budget for personnel. That's why we're forced
to close state police posts, reduce benefits for the people who need
them the most, and so on. Obviously, we need innovative solutions. One
of the mandates facing all of the state's government branches is
saving money, both in the short-term and in the long-term. The
Department of Information Technology is in a unique position to save
the state millions of dollars while simultaneously making access
easier for taxpaying citizens (like me) and to safely maintain valuabe
data. This is why I am writing.
I have no doubt that Ms. Takei, the Department's Director, has heard
about the solution recently adopted by the state of Massachusetts: the
implementation of the open standards (such as the OpenDocument Format,
or ODF, and PDF) for all of the state's office software. It is my
belief that Michigan should follow Massachusetts' lead; there are
hundreds of reasons to do so, and virtually no reasons not to.
Currently, Michigan's standards call for all of the state's desktop
systems to run Microsoft Office XP (Access, Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
plus Front Page. Even with what I'm sure is a substantial discount
from Microsoft, this is the most expensive office suite currently on
the market. Furthermore, Microsoft routinely issues new versions with
features very few people will actually use, but that introduce
significant changes in the file format. This means that the state must
spend millions of dollars upgrading just to maintain compability with
other Office users. This expense is an unnecessary waste of state money.
Additionally, the Microsoft file formats are proprietary, and because
of their frequent changes, it is difficult for other software packages
to save/open Microsoft format documents reliably. In fact, even recent
versions of Microsoft Office has difficulty opening Microsoft Office
files from earlier versions. This results in substantial difficulties
in archiving important state documents and then retrieving them
successfully.
On the other hand, open standards like ODF can be implemented by any
software developer who wants to use them. The results are reliable
cross-platform and cross-application documents. This means that the
state will no longer be effectively locked into a single vendor and
will be able to have a meaningful bidding process for purchasing
software based on the value and features of the software, saving the
state literally millions of dollars. A number of companies either have
or will be rolling out ODF-compliant office suites in the next few
months, including Sun, Corel, IBM, Adobe, Exari, and Arbortext. One
product--OpenOffice.org, backed by Sun and a variety of other software
developers--is already available for free, and has been ranked by most
reviewers as equal to or better than Microsoft Office. (The even more
impressive Version 2.0 of this product can open most
Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents with little or no "drift" and is
currently in the "release candidate" stage. It is likely to see a
final release by the end of the year.) Surely there will be no
shortage of vendors who would like to compete for Michigan's business,
and training costs for any new standard suite would be comprable
(maybe less than) training existing users on a new version of Office.
In fact, Michigan could easily keep Office as its standard suite while
adopting ODF since the format can be freely implemented by Microsoft
or any third-party developer as a plug-in for Office.
ODF was developed by a consortium of industry leaders, is expected to
become an ISO standard in the very near future, and has already become
widespread as the standard throughout Europe. It will probably be
adopted by the government of the European Community as the official
standard within the next year. Surely, Michigan wants to be able to
compete in the global marketplace and adoption of a common file format
standard is an important element of this.
There is absolutely no reason for the state of Michigan to continue to
waste money on the most expensive office suite on the market simply
because "that's what we've always done." The adoption of open
standards would allow the state to more safely archive its documents,
communicate more easily with citizens and other governments, and save
money all at the same time. I strongly urge a move in this direction,
and would be glad to discuss this further. Thank you for your
consideration of this idea.
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