Move local government from Microsoft Windows (incl. Office) to Linux and/or PC-BSD

cnst commented 8 years ago

Short description of the idea (140 character tweet):

Move local government from Microsoft Windows + MS Office to Linux and/or PC-BSD

What is your project concept or idea? What challenge or opportunity will it solve?

Make the government less dependant on proprietary software and file-formats.

Who will benefit from your project? Describe the humans at the center of the problem - who are they?

How would they benefit? Can you tell their story?

Do you have photos of them? Or quotes?

There will be cost-savings long-term. Plus, the local community will benefit, as the cost of entry to support OSS systems is lower than with proprietary ones. Open formats are more interchangeable than proprietary ones.

Issue area(s) relevant to your project idea:

[Look at the right sidebar :arrow_upper_right: ! Do you see the Labels? Pick a few]

Open Government/Transparency
What is the current state of your project idea? [Pick more labels :arrow_upper_right: ]
I understand the challenge well but don’t yet have ideas for a solution
Tell us more about the current state of your project idea.

Do you have any links to text, mockups, code, or data?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters

“The city government of Largo, Florida, USA uses Linux and has won international recognition for their implementation, indicating that it provides "extensive savings over more traditional alternatives in city-wide applications."”

http://www.largo.com/department/index.php?fDD=24-0

"The City of Largo is an innovator in the field of information technology (IT) management, using a combination of management solutions that maximize effectiveness and minimize cost. The City has received international recognition for implementation of Linux open source technology as the platform of choice. Through the selection of open source solutions for word processing, electronic mail, spreadsheet, scheduling and office automation software, the IT department continues to provide extensive savings over more traditional alternatives in city-wide applications."

Tell us about yourself.

What is your background? Why is this challenge important to you?

Are you representing a group in submitting this project idea?

Your answer

mateoclarke commented 8 years ago

Hi @cnst, thanks for submitting this project idea. Can you give a bit more description of what your project team would work on at the hackathon? It could be putting together a report to deliver to the City about the benefits of your proposal. What kind of help would you need from participants? This type of project sounds like it would be a long-term effort and would require stakeholders from within the City IT to participate to move this challenge towards a solution.

mateoclarke commented 8 years ago

I've added a couple labels too.

aristotlemanolakos commented 8 years ago

I love this idea! It never occurred to me how much money is spent on proprietary software within organizations that use Windows OS. In addition, maintenance and support for Windows software, OS, and hardware is probably ridiculous as well.

If city governments are looking for additional ways to spend less money, this proposal is an obvious win for taxpayers and govt. employees.

lancemcneill commented 8 years ago

Mateo raises some important questions. I wonder if the City could be warmed up to the idea of Open Source software over enterprise options if we found a smaller use case to prototype with. Instead of an organization-wide focus on open source, is there a specific program, department, etc. that we could find who might be interested in testing an open source option. Then, we could show the positive effects, high ROI, etc and try to change larger IT policy.

ssharif1 commented 8 years ago

ACTION NEEDED

Hello Project Champion,

Please provide the following: Full Name + Email Address You can comment here or send to ssharif1@stedwards.edu

We are going to be sending out a note + newsletter to our 345 (as of May 18) attendees sharing our submitted projects before the event and your hackers will want to know who you are. Additionally, we have PC-specific communication that we want to make sure that you are included on.

Thanks, ATX H4C Staff

mateoclarke commented 8 years ago

Hi @cnst! You're project has been accepted!

Now that your project has been approved, here are some things we suggest you do next: https://github.com/atxhack4change/2016-project-proposals#once-your-project-is-accepted-here-are-some-things-we-suggest-you-do-next

Important: We still need your preferred email address. Could you either comment here or email it to ssharif1@stedwards.edu. You will receive an email in the next few days asking you to confirming your speaking slot for the Saturday morning pitches.

Please let us know if you will no longer be able to champion your project at the hackathon.

danielhonker commented 8 years ago

@cnst - you should have received an invite to join Slack. If you haven't already joined the team and seen the Slack channel for your project, it's #linux4gov. We'll be sending out an email with details on pitches soon.

cnst commented 8 years ago

I'm not sure I can attend -- if someone else can volunteer to present this project, that'd be great!

atxhack4change / 2016-project-proposals