So, New York State is in this horrible budget crunch that is going to involve all kinds of budget cuts. It stresses me out every time I think about it. I wouldn't want to lose my job but it would also be bad having the same amount of work and less people to do it. Through the grape vine I heard that the union is working with the state on making us take 5 day pay cut, to be paid back upon retirement in order to save money now. Supposedly, we will get it back at our retiring pay rate, which is great - if NYS has any money then. Not to mention that we already gave them two weeks pay at the beginning.
I say stop borrowing from the employees and start borrowing from the wasted money spent on vendor contracts, and propriety OSs and microsoft products.
Why doesn't the government consider letting go of Microsoft and expensive vendor products, especially for web servers and office products or other systems where there are free open source alternatives that are even more robust.
In terms of the office products it is exceptionally ridiculous when most of the users don't even use any of the high-end features. You don't need expensive office software to type memos or spell check a report. Its almost like they never heard of the multitude of free office type products, most specifically openoffice.org. Moreover, its so crazy when people cling to things like Internet Explorer 6.0, software from almost 10 years ago that is light years behind where the web is now. Imagine what the web could have been if IE 6 was abandoned yers ago. Everything is always developed for the lowest common denominator. If your vendors are 5+ years behind the times, then maybe you should realize they suck. Converting stuff to work in standards complaint brosers is not rocket science. Most of the blocks are caused intentially by vendors using micorosft technology that locks the end users into microsoft solutions. As tax payers, you should really hate this. There are billions of dollars thrown out the window or should I say "at the windows."
Roswell Park alone spends a fortune on Microsoft and Microsoft related vendor products. .NET is costly and really doesn't offer much of an advantage, especially when you are using it to develop simple form based web apps. Luckily, we have changed that significantly since I came onto the scene but it needs to be more hospital and state wide.
It is the same with all government institutions from the city, to county, to state to country. Take the NFTA site
or the City of Buffalo site or the Erie County site or Roswell Park Cancer Institute's main external site Why are they all in asp and aspx - because the vendors convinced some IT people who really don't understand what they are doing, that it is necessary. It is especially true for web sites using content management systems. There are so many free, open source content management systems that run on Linux. I wonder what will happen when the old people who cling to the Microsoft ideals retire.Our new web content manager is finally committed to this. It is so financially irresponsible to use Microsoft products and then to pay huge vendor fees on top of it for a stupid CMS. Not to mention that the vendor products are closed source, so we just keep paying and paying every time we want a new feature and are completely dependent on vendor release time lines for changes.
My Suggestion
We as tax payers should force all government institutions to use free operating systems and to create and use open source software. We as tax payers should also force them to share, making all software produced by government workers, open for re-use in other departments and sectors to reduce duplicative error. You and I as tax payers should be demanding this - we pay for the government. Better yet, why not even have an official government or healthcare OS. Maybe that is my calling.
Voting Machines
This is exceptionally important in things like voting machines. At the minimum, this software should be created by government workers, completely open source and auditable by the public with the possibility of submitting patches and bug fixes back to the government to keep stuff honest. I mean why should we let any company control that.
What I have done so far
I have done a lot to try and reduce spending in IT at Roswell. All new web app development is done in Linux with CENTOS(free) / apache(free) / php(free) instead of Windows (costly and old) / microsoft IIS(costly /.NET(costly) / mssql(costly) / oracle(costly++). We also do our development in eclipse (free) instead of visual studio (costly). It is such a huge savings.
I wish other people would see this as a big issue. I guess they won't until things like having their pay reduced or delayed started to happen.
My dream job would be some sort of technology cost control manager for the state. Just so I wouldn't be some lazy ass bureaucrat leach on the taxpayers, I would want my salary directly proportional to how much I save, so that if I get lazy I get less money. I am so confident that so much money is being wasted that I think that would never be an issue all the way through my natural work life.
The hypocritical part
Some people might think this is hypocritical as I have a mac at work. I really like mac hardware so much and for what it offers the price point really isn't that high - I would consider a lenova thinkpad instead or even a Dell. I would go macbook instead of pro but I really need the larger screen size to be productive. It has to be powerful but also very portable as I carry it around everywhere for meetings and back for forth home several times a day.
If they told me I had to get rid of my mac OS for linux, I would in a heartbeat. I mean I spend 90% of the time on the mac, working on the linux servers. The mac basically become a dumb terminal. Unfortunately, being a web developer and I constantly have to test everything for mac, especially as it becomes more popular and the mac lets me test windows, mac and PC while a linux laptop only lets me test linux and PC. That might be changing with OS X running in vmware or the possibility of just sharing one mac that we all VNC into.
Paul I seriously think you should try to be heard on this... you're absolutely right, it could save tons and tons of money. Go you.
Paul, I don't think you are a hypocrite for choosing Mac hardware. Your beef is with expensive proprietary software, and I agree that your strategy is preferable to pay cuts especially because we already know the state expects to be more in the hole in coming years. Long term, if it meets your needs, it is a no brainer.
Not to further trigger your gag reflex, but I know for a fact numerous government entities and contractors use very expensive proprietary web software on Windows Server. A good friend manages hundreds of such servers. I'm talking across the board, the State Department, DOD, on and on.
Never fear, (e:drew). The suggestion-box is 100% virtual. :D
Just make sure you email it into the suggestion box--I hear there is somebody at Roswell who gets upset everytime paper is used.
Hey, till now I have only whined about the recycling and plastic in the suggestion box. Why not about opensource??!! That's it. The suggestion box is going to get a heavy dose of BRING IN OPENSOURCE. SAVE MONEY. this week. hehehehe. Join me in the suggestion-box bombardment, (e:roswellpeeps)!! :)
Absolutely. Open source all the way.
Paul, if you can figure out about how much Roswell is spending on this crap I would write up a budget plan comparing the two and shop it around town. Talk to Sam Hoyt and Bill Stakowski. Roswell doesn't seem like a place that is capable of seeing what a mess it is, like other government institutions in this state. Getting some politicians on this might actually get something done. If you need any help send me an email.
Okay - one more rant. WHY does the library pay for hideous reference management systems like refworks when FREE and INFINITELY more efficient alternative reference management systems like CiteULike (citeulike.org) exist?? The library pays nearly $100 for EACH user EACH year for refworks. ALL faculty and students have refworks accounts. Do you know how much that adds up to? What a ton of money wasted for a completely non-essential bit of reference software that can easily and gracefully be replaced by a FREE one??
Oh yeah, don't give us the red mufflers. That's sure to save a truckload of money, Roswell.
I HATE YOU PAPER-WASTERS. I also hate you garbage creating non-recyclers. You have fallen from my good will forever.
And really, do you HAVE to print out everything that you won't even READ or even LOOK AT?? I am looking at all the downright environmentally unfriendly reams-and-reams of paper-wasting grad students and faculty and staff. :/
I could not agree more with you. My work computer has installations of:
- OpenOffice
- Paint.NET
- PDFXChange
- Firefox
- R statistics software
My home comp is completely opensource except for windows itself - that I am trying to ditch for linux.
I scarcely use micro$oft bloat at office or at home (except for the omnipresent windows OS). I don't see why Roswell cannot implement an opensource policy. Employees who can learn archaic windows rot can easily switch to more efficient opensource!
I am sure you received a letter from the CEO saying how we were not going to be receiving our corporate christmas muffler this year because of the impending recession. Yeah, those red mufflers probably cost like 30 cents a piece in bulk last year. Why can't they look at things that are *really* breaking the budget?? SAS (blood-sucking) licenses cost upwards of $1000 per work terminal per year. WHY THE HELL are people still using SAS when R can be promoted and learned? SAS code is not even peer-reviewed!
Really, all this makes you think all this "money saving" "cost-cutting" tactics are just such a load of fake complacence candy and nothing else.