All of Iceland's public administrations moving towards open source

[tiagosilva29]

All of Iceland's public administrations moving towards open source

All public administrations in Iceland are increasing their use of free and open source software. The country's government recently launched a one year migration project for all of its public institutions. "The goal of the project is not to migrate public institutions to free and open source software in one single year but to lay a solid foundation for such a migration which institutions can base their migration plans on", reports Tryggvi Bj?rgvinsson, the project leader.

Examples include the three biggest public institutions in Iceland, all of the ministries, the city of Reykjavik and the National Hospital. "These are setting a good migration example", says Bj?rgvinsson.

The project will put up a common infrastructure for migrations, he explains. Here the public administrations will document and estimate the maturity of free and open source alternatives to proprietary software. "This will foster collaboration between public institutions, IT service providers and the free and open source community in Iceland."

One of the first steps in the migration project is a series of five letters sent to all the heads of public institutions, recommending for instance the use of open standards, pointing to examples that ease the move to free and open source.

Also, a group of specialists has been formed that will monitor the project, aiming to prevent future failures. The project is also compiling a list of ongoing projects surrounding the use of free and open source software by public institutions to allow collaboration on these projects.

No restrictions for open source

"Next, we are making sure that in our public schools, the national curricula does not restrict the use of free and open source software."

The project is working on a call for tender to purchase services based on free and open source software.

"Public institutions have slowly been migrating to free software over the last four years. This school year, 2011-2012, two new secondary schools moved their systems entirely to free and open source software, bringing the count to five out of 32 schools."

A majority of the secondary schools are already running Moodle, an open source course management system. Other public bodies such as the newly founded Media commission also run entirely on free and open source software.

"The country-wide migration project will build upon their experience and hopefully pave the way for other institutions to follow."

Source: European Comission Joinup

[.Neo]

This following after the near bankruptcy of the country is pure coincidence? Lol...

[tiagosilva29]

Well, they're not exactly having money problems right now...

[HawkMan]

Let's see how long they last before they like everyone else who tried realize that total cost of FOSS is higher than regular licensed software. Training, higher admin accosts, higher maintenance costs and slower/less effective employees due to bad UX all added in.

Or maybe they'll be the first to succeed on a big scale...

[threetonesun]

Let's see how long they last before they like everyone else who tried realize that total cost of FOSS is higher than regular licensed software. Training, higher admin accosts, higher maintenance costs and slower/less effective employees due to bad UX all added in.

Or maybe they'll be the first to succeed on a big scale...

I would have agreed a few years ago, but at this point FOSS has caught up in the UI field, and computer users overall have gotten much more accustomed to using various applications of varying UI quality, mostly thanks to smart phones and web apps.

[Aethec]

They should use whatever works best for them.

Using open-source "just because" or because of ridiculous price calculations (open-source is free, right? oh wait...), is a very bad idea.

[Growled Member]

Let's see how long they last before they like everyone else who tried realize that total cost of FOSS is higher than regular licensed software. Training, higher admin accosts, higher maintenance costs and slower/less effective employees due to bad UX all added in.

That's interesting. Got any data that proves that?

[Raa]

In schools at least, it should be about teaching concepts, not specifying what to use. This could be done a lot cheaper using Open Source in most cases.

[HawkMan]

That's interesting. Got any data that proves that?

All the government groups and districts in Norway, Germany, France, and other parts of Europe that tried and switched back or is in the progress of switching back.

All of them citing high operating costs as the reason.

[farmeunit]

All the government groups and districts in Norway, Germany, France, and other parts of Europe that tried and switched back or is in the progress of switching back.

All of them citing high operating costs as the reason.

I'd say it's a wash at this point, as Win8 will require training also. Also the high requirements of buying new hardware versus the lighter requirements in general for Linux. There are lots of factors that may or may not come into play. If it's well researched and implemented, there can be a huge savings. The problem is that people just jump into it expecting huge returns. You can't just have change for the sake of change.

Not to mention that there is probably a lot of price negotiation behind the scenes after switches like this are done to get people back into the Microsoft fold. Lined pockets aren't uncommon either for things like this.

[HawkMan]

Training isn't really the major one causing costs to raise though, if it was that would have passed after the first year, mostly. Familiarity is another one and the non ease of use compared to non FOSS alternatives like Office. Those aren't so much costs though as dissatisfied users and in some cases it could increase the workload of support staff and even require a bigger one.

The major costs comes from administration and operating.

And yes of course MS gives rebates to anyone coming back, ANY big institution gets much better licensing costs than small ones or especially you and me. that's how it works.However they move back because they see running costs are higher than they USED to be, and if they can get new licensed software, that's lighter and cheaper to run, and easier for the user. AND they can get it cheaper, then yeah, it's a no brainer.

As for Win 8 it will require less training than teachign them to use Win7 and the superbar. Hit windows key, click the program you want to run. Yeah that should take all of 5 seconds and be covered by the first start tutorial.

[ichi]

All the government groups and districts in Norway, Germany, France, and other parts of Europe that tried and switched back or is in the progress of switching back.

All of them citing high operating costs as the reason.

AFAIK France is still pushing FOSS and launched a support tender late last year for the office of the Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Internal Affairs, Justice, Labour, Education and others.

Extremadura (Spain) has been using FOSS for years and is planning to deploy on another 40.000 desktops this year.

Some migration projects have failed, some others worked.

[tiagosilva29]

Some migration projects have failed, some others worked.

Indeed. We had started the development and testing of a Linux distro called Linius, be used by the Ministry of Justice. All was going pretty smoothly, when the Microsoft bosses decided to make some high-profile trips to Portugal. They bribed a few pockets; Bill Gates got a medal from our president at the time; the majority of the replacement/migration projects were plugged out.

But in Switzerland their equivalent came out, and it is cool.