Most, (if not all) councils outsource their IT to a 3rd party. This outsourcing will be very fluffy around what technologies they expect to be provided, but nearly all will state some kind of Technology Refresh after X years.
The Service Integrator (SI) I work for wouldn't even consider making Linux part of the front-end refresh, so this will never be offered to the customer. So, rather than lobbying your MP, local Council or Ward officials (many of whom wouldn't know an OS if it bit them on the nose), maybe the people to speak to are the SI's or Outsourced Service Delivery managers? Or, better yet, the Non-Elected-Official who liaises between the council and the SI? They will "own the relationship", and will be in more of a position to suggest that "perhaps next time round you could put together a cost model for rolling out a Gnome/Unity/KDE desktop, as well as pricing for Windows, just to see what the cost/value differences are?" Which, incidentally, might be able to be FOI'd - just saying... Bear in mind that the focus at the moment is to move more services to "The Cloud", whether that be something like Google (unlikely), Rackspace (hmmm, slightly more possible), EC2 (in some cases), or an SI's own "Local Cloud" (such as the one I'm working on at the moment), and most of the integration to that will be using Citrix, not a web browser, you might find it pretty hard to convince people. I'm not saying the situation is untenable, but just that maybe people are focusing on the wrong areas, and not looking into how these things get going. -- Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs On 22 August 2013 15:39, Paul Sutton <zl...@zleap.net> wrote: > On 31/07/13 20:42, Pete wrote: >> I guess most if not everyone out there know that Governments use >> Windows XP (Uk Gov't) and that it costs quite a huge amount to pay in >> bulk licenses, including local councils. Does anyone know how much >> these bulk licenses cost and how many the UK Gov't have? >> >> Well, onto the main reason I am posting - I have sent an email to my >> local MP to look into using a Linux based OS instead of Windows as >> they wont need to pay for licenses which will presumably save hundreds >> of thousands. >> >> Why not send an email to your local MP or the MP that deals with the >> IT or whoever it is that does. >> >> What's your thoughts on this? > > More to the point ask what the plan is once XP reaches end of life, in > 2014 and suggest alternatives, but people are going to need training, > support in its use, etc, who can provide that, who can provide tech > support, etc, how much are canonicals packages on support. etc > > on this basis any pointers to people who can perhaps support local > government in this may be helpful, > > Paul > > -- > ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
