Linux Delhi Govt./Other Top Govt.Inst. adopt OFD/OOo ( Open Office Suite)

M

maximus999

Disciple
IN A MAJOR victory for the open document format (ODF) alliance spearheaded by Sun Microsystems, IBM, Novell, Red Hat and Oracle in India and a setback to Microsoft, a slew of departments of government of NCT of Delhi have decided to switch over to ODF-based and free open office suite from proprietary Office Suite (mostly MS Office). Initiated as a costcutting exercise, the move is expected to save government departments crores spent each year in buying licences for Office Suite.

The Indian chapter of ODF alliance includes CDAC, faculty of IIT-Delhi, IIT-Mumbai and IIM-Ahmedabad (IIMA).

According to an IIMA study, out of Delhi government’s IT software purchases of Rs 31 lakh between September ’04 and December ’05, over Rs 24 lakh was spent on buying licences for Office Suites. A similar move is now taking place at Life Insurance Corporation, Delhi High Court and Election Commission.

The central government also plans to use ODF-based software in the national egovernance project. The project envisages setting up of over one lakh IT kiosks in rural areas across the country.

ODF is an open XML-based document file format that enables retrieval of information and exchange of documents (including spreadsheets, charts and presentations) without regard to the application or platform in which the document was created. What it means is that a file saved/written in ODF can be opened or read in any software complaint with the standard. In contrast, a document created in proprietary format such as MS Office or Adobe PDF can be opened only in their respective software or compliant software.
 
This may look like a good move on paper. Now the Govt. will spend crores training their employees how to use the new software, a few of the favorites will continue to carry around their portables with the new Aps. for show. And god knows how many of these people will actually even attend the training.... So just a few more crores down the drain.....Well so what ......ITS THE TAX Payers money.....
 
that extra spending on the training is ther... but its more of a onetime invertment rather than recurring software costs....

i really think its a good move....
 
Training??? Are you nuts? The govt never trained their employees to use MS Office did it? And even if it did, OO is almost identical to MS Office for most purposes. It doesn't take any training, just a little bit of getting used to. Besides, training in India is dirt cheap anyway. The problem is you are trying to use arguments that may or may not hold in Europe/North America. They have no meaning in India.
 
No training required... the government will count on the competence of it's employees to adapt to the new applications. Besides, it's not like they're sitting there creating highly advanced spreadsheets with 50k rows of data or something :)
 
yes... thats india my friend....

we were totally ignorant of the fact that we were livin and talkin about india here...

sorry.. we mentioned training....

i guess king is right....

besides ... examples of training in india when you teach them that dog is spelled as CAT .. it stays that way... no common sense used ... its that way wit all govt. positions...
 
Kroll - Please check reports from about a year or two back. Ministers and other goverment employees were issued laptops. They never did attend the training sessions. What was pointed out by the media was that the Ministers and their cronies lugged these systems around and when asked why they continued to have the old paper pen system....the standard answer was that they did not know how to use the technology.....

In the yearly budget too you will find amounts set aside for the training of govt. employees on the usage of computers. Please go to any MTNL / BSNL / post office you will always see systems either collecting dust or lying in a corner..... I rest my case......
 
^^ Oh come on.. I have been to BSNL office and they use the most recent technology. They use barcode readers to read ur bill data. All systems of BSNL and Railways are computerised.. Have u not booked a ticket through net ??? U better do and see the level of penetration of technology...

And training is a part of job. Training is done even for MS Office also. Leave aside the high end officials. Also who said crores are spent to train people?? If it is then there will be no escalation of training cost. And look at the long term benifits dude. Saving licensing costs is one thing. But being out of MS foul play is long term goal.

Indian PSU are using computers and that too pretty good. Computerised reservation system has been in place for years. And if u seriously think then only the scale of the system is so enormous that small issues dont matter.
 
Man, forget about Ministers and high-level babus.... who gives a damn about them?
Let me tell you about something - earlier, it was the lower level employees who were scared of computers - they were afraid of losing their jobs. Now they are not - either because they accept it as inevitable, or because in India they simply will not lose their jobs.
On the other hand, it is the ministers and high level bureaucrats who are afraid! The most afraid are the Army generals/brigadiers etc! Reason being that their subordinates know computers well, while these guys do not! And so they refuse to learn at all - because if they do, and then try to use the computer, their skills will still be inferior to their subordinates! So instead, they refuse to have anything to do with computers. That way, their subordinates are not "better" in that sense - rather they simply have a completely different skill set.
And once again - check out the interface of OO. It is very similar to MS Office in most regards. Where it differs is in features that most government offices are unlikely to use.
Also, training in India is cheap.
 
I too agree with KK...In my company we are already using OO in our Data processing department which is a non-technical area...and they have quite well adapted to it without any training...The only problem till now was we were stuck with M$ Outlook due to its calendar feature and compatibility with Outlook users..but did you checked the latest Evolution for Windows :) we are soon going to deploy it and get rid of Outlook in our DP department.

Regards.
 
Back
Top