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Soleron on 01 November 2012
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HappySqurriel said:
Soleron said:

Government IT contracts with Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, HP etc. etc.

replace it all with free software running in-house developed and maintained programs for vastly less, and run it on hardware that would have to be scrapped if forced to upgrade from XP to Win7/8.

When you give IBM a maintenence contract the first thing they do is hire 30 people to do it. Why not hire those people yourself, cut out the overhead, and get loyalty?


Having met government IT people (at the municipal, provincial and federal level) that would be disastrously bad ...

It has been my experience that the larger the corporation a person comes from, and the longer they have been there, the worse they are as an IT professional. While there are exceptions to this, governmental IT departments are full of employees who are more interested in their pension than technology and the only way they can do their job is because it has been simplified by companies like Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, HP, etc.

I don't disagree with the concept that companies could save a fortune by moving towards Linux (both as servers and on the desktop), but a large portion of the reason why governments choose to hire large companies to design and implement their infastructure is because their employees are not good enough to do it.

I did some work experience at a contracted out small IT firm for the county council, and for directly employed RAF IT people, and they didn't know anything and they both employed whole people for months to do data entry jobs that I could set up with a 5-minute database import. I offered to do it and they went very, very quiet. I agree with your assessment of currently employed IT people.

I mean hire the very same people that IBM would hire. Do technical interviews and make the requirements clear. I have a lot of experience of military contracting and they basically hire everyone from scratch before working on a government project. 

And I don't mean move to Linux, the retraining costs are too high. I mean keep them on XP (and keep the old but still perfectly functional computers) and use free software instead of expensive paid licensed stuff. My school threw out 500+ working XP computers and replaced them with VERY slow Citrix thin client bullshit that fails literally half the time.