[vox-outreach] Re: Approaching Davis City Council regarding Linux and Open Source?

[Chris Jerdonek]

On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 22:39:27 -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> I'm pretty unfamiliar with city government, with respect to computer and
> software usage, and have been hoping to spark a conversation here to
> figure out how and where Linux might fit in to the City's plan.

I'm somewhat familiar with how things get done up at city hall.  It's all 
about the study.  Basically, you first want to convince the city council 
that it's worth it for them to do a study on switching to open-source.  
I'm the one that knows Mike Harrington, and he's the one that could put 
it on the city's agenda (provided he gets re-elected this March).

That study would determine the feasibility and savings of switching the 
city's computers to open source Linux, etc.  If their study finds what 
you'd expect it to find, then the council would likely vote to switch to 
open-source.

It would be helpful for one of you to do some rough preliminary research:  
call up city hall and see if you can find out what software they use and 
how many computers they have.  Try to estimate how much they spend on 
software, or maybe they could tell you exact budget figures.  The city's 
budget is public record.  If it looks like there's a chance the city 
would save $$, I'm sure they would do the study (they're looking for ways 
to save money these days as you probably know).

Secondly, it would help if one of you folks who already knows the general
arguments could take an hour or two to draft a half-page policy brief.  It 
should summarize the case for this proposal:  Davis City Government 
and the Davis Joint-Unified School District should switch to open-source 
software.  Include proposal, background, advantages, precedents, and steps 
to implementation.

If you wrote something like that, then other organizations could endorse 
it and get behind it -- along with LUGOD.  For instance, the Yolo County 
Green Party could back it and rally more support for it.  (I'm connected 
with them.)  Open-source is in the spirit of grassroots democracy and 
community-based economics etc., and that's what they're all about.

Can one of you make a couple phone calls to city hall to research what 
their story is?

CHRIS


-- 
http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~jerdonek/ : (530) 297-6947