Australian Tax Office Adopts Open Source Software

James Roberts writes "AustralianIT is reporting today that the Australian Tax Office, or ATO (Australian IRS equivalent) has ditched its standard Microsoft SOE and will now adopt the Linux operating system 'where appropriate.' It was reported late last year that the ATO was originally considering Longhorn as its preferred SOE. This is a big step for Australian Federal Government, who have been slow in the uptake of open source policies despite ongoing petitioning by several high profile pressure groups."

Re:Why start in the tax office?

[Anonymous Coward]

if something big like that can be done, so can the smaller less important things.

it sets a standard, adn a wealth of info to learn from

Make it Government Wide

[sr180]

I dont see why they dont do this government wide as China is attempting. The amount of money saved on licensing would hire a lot of staff for support and training. Thus the money previously paid for licensing would be directed into the local IT workforce, creating jobs, producing local IT experience and knowledge that can then boost the local industry instead of watching all our tax money go offshore...

Re:SOE what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary should be self-explanatory. The purpose of a summary is to let you know what the article is about. If the summary doesn't make sense without reading the article, it fails it's purpose. Had you completed high school English, you'd know that.

And btw, that skimmer summary read like something by a crackhead.

Re:Make it Government Wide

[YrWrstNtmr]

The amount of money saved on licensing would hire a lot of staff for support and training.

But wait...I thought one of the big draws with Linux is ease of administration. 1 Linux guy can admin more systems than a Windows guy. So either the government can reduce the support staff, or keep around redundant people.

The idea of saving money is to actually not spend as much, not hire unneeded people.

We can't have it both ways.

Re:In Other News

[rusty0101]

Sorry, SCO licences are only available to comercial entities. ATO is anything but comercial. It may be a parasite of comercial entities, as well as individuals, but it is not comercial in nature.

Re:Pretty Misleading Slashdot Blurb

[HillBilly]

It wouldn't be slashdot without a misleading Linux friendly title and Blurb.

Its the Fox news of the internet.

I'll believe it when I see it

[rsilvergun]

Much as I'd love to see a Gov't move to OSS, I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be another bait'n'switch to get Microsoft to give 'em some discounts. What I really want to see is them roll out linux desktops. They might still (why any country in it's right mind would trust a foriegn company with a history of getting away with shady monopolitic practices is beyond me), but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

The comment about mid range stikes me though. XP's a resource hog, but older Windows are insecure as heck. Linux could find itself a nice nitch where people need a secure desktop OS with access to patchs but don't want to buy new hardware.

Re:They still have a ways to go ...

[martinX]

Perhaps they don't run their own web servers. The government department I work for has a significant web presence but the hosting is contracted out to an outside company. In fact, none of the departments of this state government run their own web servers.

Re:Make it Government Wide

[Power Luser]

I dunno, maybe because it would be an absolutely enormous undertaking that would require hitherto unforseen coordination between every single government department, exposure to a single enormous risk rather than small, controlled experiments, retraining on a massive scale, adoption of a platform that even leading advocates claim is not quite ready for the desktop, and the total absence of proof that any of the things you've just asserted would actually come true on such a large scale?

I dunno about you, but I'd prefer that the government moved in small steps, and got things right in small steps, rather than taking a big risk, fucking it up, and never trying it again. Or is that just me?

Re:They still have a ways to go ...

[ciroknight]

The only question is who on slashdot understands analogies like this:
Imagine someone saying, "I want to date 6'5 tall women because someone said good things about them", but they have only dated girls 5'2 and shorter. How likely is it that they will keep the commitment to date 6'5 people?

Article misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

All this means is the ATO has changed their policy to that non-Microsoft software *MAY* be used where appropriate. This does not mean they are ditching any existing software, just they will be more inclusive in future decision. Hardly newsworthy, I would say!

Similar to an Australian hospital group I once worked for, ATO is so entrenched in Microsoft it is unlikely anything will change in the immediate future. Such organisation have many Linux and open source haters within their IT departments, it is very hard for pro Linux and open source people to have any impact.

CIOs are only interested in the bottom line and this could just be the ATOs attempt at getting a better deal from Microsoft.

Re:Pushing open source through laws

[timmarhy]

you people haven't a clue. You think linux = programmers not getting paid? idiot, there is nothing stopping the ATO employing programmers to work on OSS for them, if anything it means MORE free money for I.T jobs in general and not sending money down a large over seas corp. hole. good work ATO i hope you can ween yourselfs off MS software altogether.

Re:Longhorn?

[askegg]

Since when has anything the ATO done made sense?

Re:Where appropriate

[Crypto Gnome]

It all depends, if you consider the blanket deployment of a single solution without considering for *how appropriate* that solution is for the many and various expected uses to be "inappropriate" then YES they've been inappropriately using Windows.

All they've said (and this now goes for many Australian Government uses, now) is that OpenSource solutions will now be considered on a case-by-case basis, whereas previously it was "roll out this solution everywhere, without considering other options" (mainly due to Government bulk-buying of off-the-shelf commercial solutions, mostly due to HEAVY lobbying/discounting/campaign contributions?).

Yes, it's true, The Australian Government has made a commitment to officially (and seriously? one hopes) consider the use of OpenSource as opposed to (as previously) considering only mass-market commercial solutions.

Really simple.

[The Fink]

Australian bureaucracies -- doubtless, others worldwide, too -- take about two to three years to come to a decision. It's actually a really smart move on the part of their decision-makers to start the decision-making process about two to three years early, since that's about how long it takes them to make the decision.

Heck, speaking with first-hand experience, I can plainly state that some places didn't upgrade to Windows NT until Windows 2000 had come out. And have only recently gone to Windows 2000.

Of course, even with spending the next few years evaluating the unevaluable (an unreleased OS), that'd come up when they'd finally gotten to making a decision, which in turn means the evaluation would be thrown out, and restarted at point zero.

... and people wonder where Australian tax dollars go. :-)

Re:SOE what?

[sparkie]

Not everyone is an American, or attends American High School English. Being someone who completed high school English, I know summaries are *not* supposed to be self-explanatory. They are meant to entice you into reading the full article.

Now, promptly remove your head from your ass and look at the light of day.

Re:Does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until they move the java from MRJ to Sun JRE. Then it'll run it fine.