[Vox-Outreach] Pinging govt places about GTC

[Paul Miller]

Hi all,
>
>Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 02:31:38 -0700
>From: Bill Kendrick <nbs@sonic.net>
>To: LUGOD Outreach <vox-outreach@lists.lugod.org>
>Subject: [Vox-Outreach] Pinging govt places about GTC
>Reply-To: vox-outreach@lists.lugod.org
>
>
>My friend John worked on a government tech. magazine, so I asked him if
>he knew any good places to contact about the Government Tech. Conference
>we'll be at.
>
>Here's the list.  I've put "*"s next to ones that I think would be
>especially good to get a flyer or some other info. out to:
>
>   Administrative Hearings
>   Energy Management
>* Executive Office
>   Fiscal Services
>   Fleet Administration
>   Human Resources
>   Legal Services
>* Legislation
>* Procurement
>   Public School Construction
>   Real Estate Services
>   Risk and Insurance Management
>* Statewide eGovernment Initiatives Office   <-- ESPECIALLY this one [1]
>   Small Business & DVBE Certification
>   State Architect
>* State Publishing
>* Telecommunications
>
>
>What do people think?  A lot of these seem to have the same address, BTW,
>so sending one copy would PROBABLY suffice, unless we really wanted to
>stand out to them.  (See "*"'d ones, above :) )
>
>-bill!
>[1] http://www.einitiatives.dgs.ca.gov/default.html

This is a topic I am quite interested in.

I talked to one official in the state who told me that there are 
about 175 agencies in the state.  Each has quite a bit of autonomy as 
far as IT goes.  The state fairly decentralized most authority for 
purchasing.  However, I would expect a lot of resistance from the 
legal departments of all these agencies because they have not thought 
of how open source fits in with risk management.

Contacting these agencies now, before the June budget deadline is 
good timing.  According to the recent news, many of the state people 
may be working for minimum wage while the budget issues get sorted 
out. They will doubtless be in the mood to save money in an area not 
associated with salaries.

There are 300,000 state employees.  If they were to cut the $100 
annual licensing cost for Microsoft Office out of the budget by 
switching to open source it could save up to $30 million per year. 
Not to mention that fact that counties and special districts would 
all follow suit to help their budgets.  Of course there are many 
other well tested open standards based applications the state 
agencies could authorize internal IT groups to use such as Apache, 
Bind, SendMail...

There is a growing collection of studies on the use of open source in 
government both here and abroad that should be brought to the state's 
attention at all levels. Here is a link to a site that has a nice 
collection. 
http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/page/Ideas_for_OSS_policy.html

Is anyone trying to develop a list of contacts in the state?  Many 
government employees are fairly accessible by a local phone call. How 
about elected representatives and appointed officials?

Is such a project the group is willing to spend time on?

If not, realize every citizen has an obligation to support the 
government besides just taxes.  In my opinion, calling up state 
people and engaging in constructive dialog about open source is a 
form of support.

Recording the results of conversations where state employees express 
interest would be a good start at dialog.  If we were to share the 
phone numbers of interested agencies/officials we could avoid some 
duplication and focus where we may get results.  Perhaps a published 
scorecard ranking the better prospects?

At the very least, we should be get peoples cards at the GTC 
conference and put them in a database for followup by those who have 
the time and interest.  Realize it usually takes many contacts before 
most people 'buy' andything regardless of price.  However, the 
contacts do not have to be by the same person.

Best,
Paul