Dear Mr O'Farrell, As my local member and Shadow Minister for IT, I would like to express my gravest conserns regards Australia's IT trade deficit. At the moment this problem accounts for approximately 80% of our total Current Account Deficit (CAD)
In the last 10 year Australia has had a trade deficit on IT of nearly $100 000 million ($97 billion) Dr John Houghton just complete update to his major report on the IT & C markets. http://www.cfses.com/ict2001.htm Software accounts for approximately 30% of that deficit. Are you aware of free / open source software such Linux, Apache or OpenOffice If the Australian and or NSW governents used free / open source the direct savings would around $2 billion per year and indirect savings closer to $10 billion per year. It is difficult to model governmental IT cost as organisations such National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) can not even advise how much the federal government spends on IT. Most of Europe is moving towards the use open source and the French government has created a department to promote 'libre' software. "Open Standards and Open Source / Free Software are also required to accelerate the construction of e-Governement at the European Union level. As stated by French MP Jean-Yves Le D�aut back in an April 2000 proposal of Law, "open communication systems and source code availability are compulsory in order to guarantee at the European level a high level of interoperability between information systems of public administrations". EuroLinux strongly urges all national governments and the European Commission to officialy endorse open standards and to consider the use of open source / free software. " http://www.atica.pm.gouv.fr/ China and Russia have banned Windows software for government information on the bases that it is not secure. Open source software is more reliable, faster and cheaper. I would like the opportunity to discuss this matter further at your convenience. regards, -- Richard Hayes Phone: +(61-2) 9360 5555 Fax +(61-2) 9361 0094 0414 618 425 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
