Hi Reinier,
I have passed on these concerns to one of the commissioners in URA who
has asked the project manager for the domestic taxes modernisation
project Mr. Henry Saka to get in touch with you about working with you
to fix these issues. I have forwarded his address to you in a PM so
please discuss with him and get back to the rest of the list on what
the way forward is. ( I volunteered you as the point man on this issue)
Noah.
On Jan 15, 2010, at 4:11 PM, Reinier Battenberg wrote:
Hi Kiggs,
this is very helpful. I think it would be a good idea if we explain
our issue
to the project team. We could also offer help. If someone can sell
his services
to URA and fix this, that is fine. It would solve our problems and
someone is
paid for services.
But I think we can also do something as a community. There are some
bugs we
could fix (like the datepicker), or even the spreadsheets. (we have
a working
version it seems, just by removing all the field validations.
Totally untested
though)
I can't do this alone, and so can any of us (unless you are a retired
millionaire with programming skills), but we have very few on this
list.
I think we could come up with a collective email. Let me suggest a
few points
that we could mention there:
- Can we create a bugtracker for FOSS issues where the community and
URA can
work together?
- If possible, could you still find the budget to adapt the existing
spreadsheets to be workable with OpenOffice?
- Can we submit patches for the website, and will you implement them?
- Once we have fixed all bugs for Firefox for you, will you put a
download link
for firefox on your website?
Would there be more points that we can discuss with URA? And are
there any
objections to send an email like this out "on behalf of the FOSS
community"
(or Linux User Group).
Once we have fleshed out the list of points a bit, I can make a
writeup of the
full email.
--
rgds,
Reinier Battenberg
Director
Mountbatten Ltd.
+256 782 801 749
www.mountbatten.net
Do you have a businessplan? Make your idea work: www.startyourbusiness.ug
On Friday 15 January 2010 08:01:39 Kiggundu Mukasa wrote:
Reinier
My search has found the following info
1) URA signed a contract with TCS ( Tata consultancy services ) which
only committed to working with IE 6 and Above and Microsoft Office.
because "this is what they could offer as a stable platform"
2) there is a URA Project team that really want to gain acceptance
from the tax payer for this system and would listen to your
complaints
3) You would be expected to have "Fix suggestions" on hand that are
specific and not too general as you are the experts in this FOSS you
are talking about :-)
4) the Project team can be contacted via [email protected]
Kiggs
On Jan 14, 2010, at 4:37 PM, Reinier Battenberg wrote:
Hi,
As some might know the URA is switching to an online system for
filing your
taxes. Very commendable, i hope it will help them with their
efficiency.
Unfortunatly, there are a few issues when trying to use the system
when using
openoffice and firefox.
the site is http://www.ura.go.ug
Some are small things, for example, the datepicker used when you
create an
account shows a bit funny in firefox.
More difficult is the Excell spreadsheet that you have to download,
fill in and
post back. We don't have a copy of excell, but in openoffice we see
a LOT of
vbscript and we get some very funny errors
For example the check on some fields is not checking for a Number
between 0 and
XXXXX, but it is checking for "more than 0 and less than 15
characters"
OpenOffice thinks that Numbers are no characters, so "60000" is
invalid, but
"60000abc" is. I dont think that is what the check should do.
As Linux and FOSS community, what would you suggest is the way
forward in
helping the URA to support people in Uganda that choose to use free
software?
Reinier Battenberg
Director
Mountbatten Ltd.
+256 782 801 749
www.mountbatten.net
Do you have a businessplan? Make your idea work:
www.startyourbusiness.ug
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