Open Source in the Public Sector
The New Zealand Open Source Society is launching a project to demonstrate the viability of free open source software on public sector desktops.The Public Sector Remix project aims to help public agencies reduce the cost of desktop computing. The project will deploy free open source software for nominated staff to use for common business tasks and evaluate the results.
A number of central, regional and local government agencies are working together to run trials using free software for common desktop tasks, the society says.
The project was initiated locally, society president Don Christie says. He was unable to elaborate on agencies currently running trials apart from saying there were 14 and naming one which had given permission to be cited: New Zealand Post.
I’m a big open source fan. Not in an anti-MS way. I use MS products at both home and work. But what I love about open source software is that it is so easy to find third party plugins, enhancements or versions of software which better fits what you want.
“When we asked participants what people need, they told us that 90 percent of the people, 90 percent of the time, have pretty simple needs,” Christie, says. “Document management — word processing, spreadsheet, mail and calendar; a web browser to access their modern line-of-business applications; and access to legacy client– server applications.”
The scary thing is you can now do almost all of that just through Google!
Metiria Turei blogs on this issue also at Frog Blog.