Re: [edlug] Scottish Executive: Staroffice

[Robert Hart <robert.hart@xxx.xxx.xxx>]

OK I'll bite...

First, let me declare up front that I work for the Scottish Executive in
their core ICT department. This department provides ICT services for the
Scottish Executive. So, this article will have nothing to do with the IT
department. My guess is that it was done by the Education Department.

Next - lets get our facts straight about the various government
departments Scotland:

When devolution happened, the Scottish Office disapeared. It was
replaced by the Scotland Office (which is effectively the Westminster
Department and is basically there for liason with Westminster and to
provide support for the Scottish Secretary) and the Scottish Executive.
This is the executive arm of devolved Scottish government. They do the
public consultation and policy research for Scottish Ministers, and then
facilitate the delivery of policy - usually by dishing out money to the
appropriate public bodies. The Scottish Parliament provide support and
services for the MSP's. So, since the new parliament building is being
built by the Scottish Parliament for the Scottish Parliament, then how
will that affect the budget of the Scottish Executive? - especially
since it is the Scottish Executive that gives them their money.

Phew! Now, the Scottish Executive use various database systems. The
technology chosen is dependant on the project and the supplier of the
solution. So, no, the Executive is not doing a wholesale Access database
migration to other platforms.

The desktop infrastructure for the Scottish Executive is Microsoft.
There is no Staroffice or openoffice on any Executive desktop.

OK - now lets get back to the article. It is about Star Office. The last
time I looked it was not an open source product, and Openoffice was not
mentioned once in the article. Sun seem to be pretty schitzephrenic
about their attitude towards and promotion of OSS (check
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040426120752778 ) and I'm
willing to bet that the deal was made more on exonomics. Also note that
the article says that it is still up to the individual school to decide
to use the product - so it may never happen in a large scale.

Don't get me wrong - this is good news, and guys, don't feel put down by
my rantings - I don't know about the IT of your company :-). However the
misconceptions stacking up on top of each other was starting to get to
me (although there are one or two of my misconceptions in here too - so
shoot me down folks:-) ). 

Roebrt


On Sat, 2004-05-08 at 01:12 +0100, Iain C wrote:
> I think the Scottish Office ar in danger of being way under-budget if 
> they use
> Staroffice and other OSS.  Are they using the Win32 version or Linux, 
> does anyone know?
> 
> PS: Maybe they can tell my company to switch to 
> Lunix/Soffice/Eudora/Mozilla etc.  Our IT
> department have thier heads in a dark place when it come to MS stuff 
> anyway.  I want to
> get paid £35/hr to tell people to reboot all day.... ;-)  Nice work if 
> you can get it.
> 
> IT departments LOVE viruses.  It justifies thier existence.  Then again, 
> if a virus was really a
> threat in the first place ...
> 
> PS: I got Sasser'ed and also Gaobot'ed at the same time. Cool huh!  I 
> got 166 files in quarantine,
> just in the last 4 weeks since I installed McAfee.  I wish my 330 
> speedtouch would work
> under Mandrake 10 ... ;-(
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John McAulay wrote:
> 
> >
> > Hi There
> >
> > Moving away from Abscess (oh I really meant Access) is a big leap for 
> > a  big organization like the Scottish Executive, but then again 
> > they'll be  more cautious about spending money unnecessarily after 
> > Hollyrood, so  perhaps Open Office and Linux will gradually gain 
> > momentum with the  Scottish Executive.
> >
> > John
> >
> >
> > On 7 May 2004, at 18:06, Ross McLachlan wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Some good news I guess. I doubt we will see many areas of the Scottish
> >> Executive themselves using Staroffice however... I am working in one of
> >> their IT teams in the summer and they only last year went to Windows XP
> >> + Office XP.. :(. On a more positive note I noted a larger Oracle and
> >> Sun presence instead of horrible MS Access,etc databases being used as
> >> they were previously..
> >>
> >>
> >> Ross.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, 2004-05-07 at 09:26, Bob Kerr wrote:
> >>
> >>> Awareness in the Scottish Executive is really picking up
> >>>
> >>> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/ 
> >>> 0,39020384,39153936,00.htm
> >>>
> >>> Cheers
> >>>
> >>> Bob
> >>>
> >>> _________________________________________________________________
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-- 
Robert Hart <robert.hart@xxx.xxx.xxx>

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