Gary Edwards (Open Document Foundation) and I were talking yesterday, and he mentioned the NASCIO (National Association of State CIOs) Conference coming up. I checked out last year's conference and found an interesting set of slides from an open source session they held.
From the slides, some useful data on why state governments are buying into open source. (Note: The survey was to CIO-level IT people within state governments. Pretty credible data, especially since NASCIO gets 350-450 senior government IT folks out to its annual conference, and restricts the survey (unless I'm reading the site wrong) to the most senior IT officials).
Anyway, why are state CIOs buying into open source? Well, for one thing, because it costs less. But also because it works better:
As for where they're currently at in adoption the answer is hugely positive: not very far. Why is this positive? Because I'd rather be at 25% and growing than 99% and shrinking.
What's holding it back? Again, the news is good, because it reveals, in the first place, a lack of understanding about how much the open source market has matured (support) and, in the second instance, a need for more capable IT staff. This will happen organically as the youth are being raised on open source. In 10 years, it will be Windows/SQL Server/etc. expertise that will be lacking, not Linux / MySQL / JBoss / SugarCRM / JasperSoft / Alfresco / Digium / etc. expertise. Microsoft will be the Buick driven by my grandmother (bless her!), and open source will be the Honda or Toyota that everyone drives because it's cheaper, works better, never breaks, etc.
Why am I so optimistic on this open source future? Because the customer satisfaction it brings:
Time to call your state government and vote open source. Sounds like they'll be happy to get that call.
Posted by Matt Asay on August 3, 2006 01:37 PM
