On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 06:20:20AM -0500, Seth Cohn wrote: > HB1197 was voted ITL (Inexpedient to Legislate) yesterday by the NH > House. This was no surprise, as the Executive Dept committee voted to > kill it by 15 to 1, and released the following report on it: > > HB 1197, establishing a committee to study requiring state government > to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. > INEXPEDIENT TO LEGISLATE > > Rep. James B. Coburn for Executive Departments and Administration: A > sub-committee discussed this issue and determined that the major main > frame applications are probably not available in open source software. > There is software called "open office" that is similar to a Microsoft > product installed on most desktops. Upon checking with the Office of > Information Technology,
Hi Seth, This phrase, "checking with the office of information technology', seems key to me. My guess is that the resident technology people have no experience with or interest in Open Source. I have found that whenever you are trying to introduce open Source to a noncommercial organization, such as a school system or a town or any form of government the very first and most important group of people to convince are the people who are the current technology gurus for that organization. In this case I am using the term "guru" very loosely. The resident technology "experts" have an established relationship with the representatives or politicians running the show. This relationship is based on the technology people taking care of the needs of the representatives or the politicians and of course recognizing that the representatives and the politicians hold a great deal of power the technology people have made sure to take "very good" care of them. As a result the technology people have a high level of credibility with those politicians. So the politicians will take whatever they are told by these people as gospel. Until there is some high-level technology person within that government body who is an open source advocate it will be difficult to make progress convincing the politicians that open source is the preferable technology to use, or even a viable alternative. In fact the only reason that the Massachusetts government has made some progress is due to the chief technology officer for the executive branch of the state, and his boss, and the head of I. T. for the executive branch were all being in favor of the Open Document Format. And even with these three high-powered, high-level sponsors the ODF movement in Massachusetts is receiving huge amounts of resistance and in the short-term may not prevail. (In the long term, I believe that open source software and open standards will become the accepted and preferred choices. The problem is, how long is long-term?) > it was determined that the state does not have > the technical resources to control or support such software. Vote > 15-1. > > Yes, you read that right: Let's not have a study committee to look > into this, because we already know that open source doesn't work on > mainframes, and of course, we don't have any technical resources for > this sort of thing now in OIT, so lets not have a study committee > might see that we'd save millions (and thus could afford to hire a few > helpdesk staff to support it). This is a typical political maneuver to kill the proposal by making sure it never gets out of committee. It sucks. It's slimy. And sleazy. And it's the way things seem to work when dealing with any democratically elected body of representatives. Inevitably the choices made by that body aren't made based on what is "right",but are made based on "what will get me reelected or will gain me the power within this body so that I can have the leverage I need to get reelected?". Of course none of that is any surprise to us. The problem is what do we do about it? The most efficient path to getting open source used by a government body is to convince those resident technology people that it is to their benefit to use open source. The problem with this path is that it is frequently not to the benefit of the bureaucrat in charge of IT to use open source. Why? Because open source saves money, time and manpower. I just finished reading a fantastic book named "Freakonomics". it's a great book, only about 200 pages, written in a way that is enjoyable to read and easy to follow. In other words it is not a typical economics book at all. The author tells great stories about how more closely examining the economics of particular groups of people reveals often startling information about what truly is motivating them and what they perceive to be beneficial to themselves. >From the point of view of a bureaucrat, the purpose of life is to secure their position within the bureaucracy by gaining control of the largest budget and the largest number of people as possible. So instead of an efficient solution the bureaucrat strives for solutions which require more resources rather than fewer. This enables them to more easily justify larger budgets and larger personnel requirements. Some will think that what I just said is far too cynical to be possible and that any bureaucrat behaving in this fashion would be so inefficient that they would quickly be replaced. That is true, but the bureaucrats realize that they have to balance their efforts to gain resources with the need of the politicians to appear to be striving for efficiency, and against the ambitions of other bureaucrats within the organization. If one bureaucrat becomes too inefficient, another will use that excess to destroy their credibility and acquire their resources or at least get their resources reassigned to someone who is an ally within the organization. If the bureaucrat in charge of IT cannot be converted to an open source mentality then the next way forward is to convince the politicians that the IT people are biased or incompetent. That is a very difficult thing to do and dangerous to attempt. At all times convincing the IT people to become open source supporters is a far better path and worth whatever amount of effort it takes to accomplish it. > > Based on this bogus report, we're going to work to have similar > legislation introduced again next year, and deal with both of these > misperceptions (I suspect someone at OIT wanted this dead on arrival, > since they never testified on it in a hearing, but worked behind the > scenes against it.) It didn't help that the Science/Tech committee > didn't get this bill to consider, either... ExecDepts didn't > understand this issue. I wonder if it might be possible to find out who was in charge of the office of information technology and start taking them out to lunch? If we cannot convince the internal technology people that open source is a better choice, then a much larger and more difficult campaign will be needed to convince the politicians that, even though their internal IT people say it's no good, open source software is better for the state. This might mean having to publicize and educate the entire voting population of New Hampshire about open source software and the fact that it is a better choice for government infrastructure. To do this will require substantial expenditure of resources. Does anyone have contacts in the state government? > > Next year, I'd love for a few dozen people to show up, and help > explain how Open Source works, the benefits (on lots of levels), and > how it would increase NH economy, etc. > Hopefully, people like Mr. Hall and others can appear and help this happen. > > Anyone interested in helping this effort, please contact me, as we can > start laying the ground work for next year... > > Seth > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss > -- Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA. speech recognition software may have been used to create this e-mail "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Brandeis To think contrary to one's era is heroism. But to speak against it is madness. -- Eugene Ionesco _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
