[Klug-general] answer to my FOI request from Kent County Coucil

[Jonathan Kaye]

Jo Sharrad wrote on 13/10/14 19:58:
> Wow. 
>
> Need more time to process it. 
>
> But still my first response is .....wow.
>
> As a quick note the only problem I would foresee out of all of the
> bullet points against moving to OSS is the software one, all the
> others can be argued against. That one is tougher, and can be a big
> stumbling block.
Thanks for the comments, Jo. Do you mean software for the end user or
software for administrative purposes. Concerning the end users, I am
working in two Kent Libraries, Margate and Westgate, as an IT Buddy
volunteer. I have also been leading a group whose theme is computing for
the retired. I don't believe that these people would experience any
difficulties with respect to using browsers (Firefox instead of
MSExplorer), email clients (Thunderbird instead of Outlook) or Office
suites (Libreoffice instead of MSWord). I have helped out some
neighbours with their computers and there have been no complaints about
the software. If you mean administrative software, I can't understand
why the council has not consulted with other libraries that have already
made the change and ask them about the difficulties (and expense) of the
change. They speak vaguely of possible issues when we have the ability
to determine exactly what degree of difficulties were involved in the
change to free software. Why speculate when real-life experience is
available?

>
> One example for a bullet point that can be argued is staff training,
> ok we did it on a smaller scale, but we did zero staff training when
> it came to moving staff to Linux/OSS like libreoffice, firefox. Most
> of the time if we did not tell them it was Linux they didn't even realise.
>
> To be honest they didn't need to do a massive roll-out they could of
> just done one department to see the impact.
>
Agreed. But they talk about a "strategic commitment" to Microsoft. Do
you know what a "strategic commitment" is? Do council members have stock
options in Microsoft? Seriously though, why on earth would anyone have a
"strategic commitment" to a corporation?
> Thanks for taking the time to get this FOI, it is a big insight.
>
> Jo
>
> ps. Meant to be doing an assignment......must.....resist.....the
> urge.....to research more into this........
>
>
Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm retired so I have more time. I'll try to get
more info from organisations that have already made the change.
Jonathan