Australian Tax Office Adopts Open Source Software 167
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."
Off the shelf or custom? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why start in the tax office? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
They still have a ways to go ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Simple. (Score:2, Interesting)
Hitler also followed this numbering scheme. He started numbering his troops at something like 10,000 to make the first recruits think there were many before them.
If only Intuit BuickBooks had a Linux port (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They still have a ways to go ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
The only way a company truly converts to OSS is if they have a high-exposure, successful project, and once again, the web site is the best way to accomplish this. Several companies I did work for decided to convert to OSS right after we installed a *nix box running Apache.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
Yes, No (Score:5, Interesting)
Having friends within the ATO I can tell you with certainty that no savings will be passed on to the public.
That said, we may incur LESS additional budget bloat (a fixture since the introduction of GST and the complete farce of it's implementation).
Q.
It can't be a full scale conversion. (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the greatest entrenchment is something called the ATO innovation centre. This is where they collaborate at a high level with microsoft, on new products and solutions to what they're working on.
I'm sure I would have heard about news as big as the ATO closing down their innovation centre so one can assume, they aren't even close to getting rid of ms, but are still deep in bed taking a pounding in the wallet.
Other reasons I'm doubtful of the move are custom pieces of software that have been made for the ATO would have to be ported.
I know for a fact that the company I work has over the years written a large number of pieces of software for the ATO using, vb and
ATO (Score:5, Interesting)
Putting their support for monopolists aside, government incompetence is so 90's. The concept of DETERMINISM needs to be explained to the ATO.
If anything should be deterministic it's the tax code. The refund/liability amount should be perfect to the last penny, in all but the most complex returns.
Even in that situation, the estimated return should be correct, but potentially there may be arguments about the content of the return itself, not the resulting amount.
Nice to see... (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm betting that e-tax will be Windows-only again this year, but it's a bet I wouldn't mind losing.
Re:Why start in the tax office? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am, right now, sitting next to a bunch of developers who are battling to get a single part of a Websphere implementation to work, let alone be productive. The current word is that the leader of the team should probably be looking for a new job because of the current budget blow-out.
Sure, apache is no doubt working beautifully behind the scenes here, but from what I've heard that would be the only thing working. IBM have promised us the world, and are now helping us towards fulfilling that promise, without very much success.
Developing an Intranet solution based on Websphere has little to do with what web server its running on, and more to do with the content management tools it provides, how easy it is to have it co-exist and integrate with existing applications, and how clear the business are in defining the requirements.
Luckily, here, management are smart enough to understand that the problems lie with IBM's solution, and not the fact that we're using open-source software
Seen this one? FLAG (Score:3, Interesting)
Ran across this morning looking for something else
http://www.dsd.gov.au/library/software/flag/ind
You may want to check the source or have someone you trust do so
Re:If only Intuit BuickBooks had a Linux port (Score:3, Interesting)
Other versions didn't work but QB Pro 2000 does. CrossOver should put more effort into supporting QB as a critical application that prevents businesses from adopting Linux. I don't care if it runs IE or MS Office. All I need is QB and OSS.
I'm looking forward to a native Linux port of QB, but CrossOver emulation is good enough for now.
I switched my small business to Linux 14 months ago and it's been great.
Re:Off the shelf or custom? (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess this in turn means that they would primarily be doing custom developed software. I can't imagine too much off the shelf type stuff that would be of interest to ATO.
Re:Why start in the tax office? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is the LAST organization I'd want... (Score:3, Interesting)
If the NSA were to try to sneak something like that into a piece of F/OSS, others among the "many eyes" would almost certainly spot it. And before some wag asks, no, the recent release of some old Win2K source on P2P filesharing networks does not give Windows the same advantage...
--Mark