Toronto Municipal Open Source Revolution, anyone ?

[David J Patrick]

Max Blanco wrote:

>On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, William Park wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>  
>
>>Maybe there is someone at the new City Hall who is interested in all
>>this.  If not, then we're wasting time.
>>    
>>
>
>I don't quite agree.  Who wouldn't be interested in saving $100 million
>right off the bat?  This would be a nice feather in someone's budgetary
>hat... a young go-getter on staff...
>
>There are two areas I'm interested in right now that seem to be eating up 
>all our tax dollars (in an incremental sense... they seem to get a bigger 
>slice of the yearly pie) one is computers, the other is medical 
>technology.
>
both of which can be best served with existing distributed open-source 
solutions.

>  The average person does NOT understand computers.  Hence, 
>this is a golden opportunity for vultures to feast.  Heck, the average 
>councillor does not understand computers.
>  
>
nor should they have to ! If the IT department is doing its' job, 
everyone else should be free to use the tools without thinking about it.

>When I look at it, the average office worker needs a) word processor b)
>email c) push database client d) spreadsheet(?).  This requires a CRT
>monitor, a used computer, an ethernet card, a 1 gig drive, a keyboard, and
>linux. A CD install could do this lickety-split on *existing* machines.
>  
>
The average office worker who needs a)b)c)and d) might find thin-client 
the best answer; skip the 1 gig drive and use a fleet of yesterdays 
hardware. access your files (and cuddly kitten desktop) from anywhere ! 
Even wireless ! All important files within reach, yet secure and backed 
up ! All (most) system administration done centrally and multiplied to 
the user base. Only a small minority of users will require computing 
horsepower beyond the reach of thin client set-up.

>The city IT staff would need classes and support to make the transition.  
>
>The key would be that $100 million can be split off into $90 million 
>savings and $10 million linux training services.  $10 million buys a lot 
>of linux training services.
>
>This will no doubt fail if too much is bitten off at one go, so
>start small, with one department or building, or even one office.
>
>The CD install in a fine-tuned presentation: bingo.
>  
>
I agree that the presentation could be a customized bootable distro, but 
the "big picture" solution will be a lot more complex.
djp

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