David Sadly (or fortunately) we do not fall within the "economic stimulus" domain here in South Africa. We do how ever have a huge developmental push and our young democracy (-20 years) has a long way to go in optimizing governmental administrative systems. Having worked in the public sector myself for over twenty years (some as a CIO) I have a special interest in the sector. I spent the past 16 or so months plugging away at OfBiz to see where and how it can be applied, especially given the SA government's commitment to Open Source. I will be making pitches at various local government organisations over the next few weeks - there is a strong possibility that we might get a funded pilot (hold thumbs) and will keep you up to date with developments in this regard.
It nice to know that some work has been done and I can refer to these in my presentations. What happened to Open for Government - I think Hans was driving this? Cheers Gavin -----Original Message----- From: David E Jones [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 04 February 2010 04:48 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OfBiz in Government Anil Patel used to work for a public utility district in Washington State and introduced a number of OFBiz-based solutions there, including one to do fleet management. Hans Bakker did some stuff with this a few years ago in Thailand. A company called Integral Business Solutions did a bunch of US Air Force contracting based on OFBiz. Currently Ean Schuessler and Adam Heath of Brainfood put together a site for (if I understand it right) a US Govt lobby for open source software, and the site itself runs on OFBiz and Webslinger. It's just the site though, this isn't any sort of OFBiz lobby and the people there are generally big wigs from larger organizations pushing various different things in government. I've been contacted by a number of government contractors (typically larger organizations, or companies that specialize in govt contracting) over the years with proposals for everything from payroll and human resources for tens of thousands of people, to equipment planning and maintenance for emergencies. However, it seems like these larger contracts are a HUGE uphill battle and almost impossible to get unless you already have an "in" with the buying organization (yes, the revolving door is a HUGE deal here, and usually those who help drive industry after being in govt stick with larger companies where there is more money). Those are just off the top of my head. There are definitely various government sponsored projects that use OFBiz. Still, especially for larger projects it's tough for open source based solutions to even get a foot in the door, which I guess is what the organization the Brainfood has been working with is trying to fix. If you're hoping to get a slice of the ever-growing world-wide "economic stimulus" spending that is going on these days there may be better ways to go about it than to try to leverage open source software (unless perhaps it is the variety like RedHat Linux or OpenOffice that might have a multi-million dollar support contract to go along with it). Of course, that's just my opinion... and I'd be delighted if someone would prove me wrong! -David On Feb 3, 2010, at 4:04 AM, Gavin Mabie wrote: > Hi list > > > > Is there anybody on the list that tried or implemented OfBiz in the public > sector / government? > > > > Gavin >
