City of Casey draft budget response

Dear Chief Executive Officer,

Free Software Melbourne is an organization of free software users and advocates. We share the values of the Free Software Foundation, the GNU project and LibrePlanet, and represent the Australian network of free software users and developers in Victoria. Part of our work involves raising awareness of the benefits of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in relation to government, and it is in that capacity that we make this submission.

Free and Open Source software is software for which the source code is made available to the user for free. This offers several advantages over closed-source software, notably in security and flexibility, but the most important advantage for the purposes of Council is its cost and reduced maintenance burden.

In response to the Casey Council's call for community consultation Free Software Melbourne propose the use of robust and well supported free and open source software alternatives where it is simple and feasible to do so. By doing so the Casey Council can reduce in the order of $3.5M of this capital expenditure by using free and open-source alternatives to proprietary software and systems. The Council budget has allocated at least $1.25 million for software purchases alone and if the Council were to use open-source software, this part of the budget could be easily reduced. Even just supporting or endorsing many of the below solutions as alternatives available to staff members and infrastructure developers may mean that you will find people migrating to a solution that works well for them, and in the process results in savings to the budget every year in reduced licensing costs.

Free and Open Source Software ensures a community is free to run, copy, study, change and improve the software. In order to do so, the software’s source code is freely available to be studied and modified by any user of that community. This results in a number of benefits for using FOSS and open standards by the Casey Council including a reduction or elimination of on going license fees and stopping vendor lock-in (where the Council must use only a single vendors systems). Enhanced security, privacy and reliability are afforded to the users and the community as the source code is available for independent researchers and interested stakeholders to study, patch or improve. There are also significant accessibility advantages involved in utilizing open standards and software such as not requiring that anyone dealing with the Council purchase a Microsoft licensed product . Free and Open Source Software also helps develop the local economy by engaging small to medium businesses for the support and development of FOSS systems internally or externally.

In the following sections we seek to address some of the specific budget items and suggest alternative software that could be adopted to reduce long term costs, increase security and help drive the new local economy.

Booking System, Venue/Ticketing Management System

Not being in a position to analyze the exact requirements of the booking system providing suggestions can prove difficult. Nonetheless, venue booking systems are commonly needed, and many open-source alternatives, such as Meeting Room Booking System (MRBS) (http://mrbs.sourceforge.net/ ), Classroom Bookings (http://classroombookings.com/ ) and Booked (http://www.twinkletoessoftware.com/products ) exist. We suggest that you consider these before making a decision to spend $420,000. Even if these do not meet your needs exactly, it is possible to use these as a starting point and pay a programmer to add whatever features you need to them for far less than the cost of an entire proprietary system. By reducing duplication of effort and building on the work of the community, Council can reduce the cost of obtaining its software.

Mobile device (computer) replacement

With $691,000 budgeted for mobile devices it seems that there should be an option that is both environmentally friendly and a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). For this purpose we would recommend the FairPhone (https://www.fairphone.com ) being offered as an option. The manufacturer acquires materials and commodities from ethical sources and is completely recyclable. As added benefits the operating system is free and open source and the device can be easily serviced and repaired, reducing e-waste.

Upgrade – Content Management System (CMS) (Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Phase 2 – Continuation of ECM Project General)

While the outlay of $50,000 in itself appears to be modest this seems to be part of a much larget CMS project. We would therefore bring to Councils attention that many open source alternatives exist that could be explored which may have a lower total cost of ownership especially when we consider that much of the maintenance costs are effectivly outsourced to the community. Two notable examples of trusted CMSs are Alfresco (https://www.alfresco.com/ ) and NuBuilder (https://www.nubuilder.net/ ). Adopting an open source solution can benefit the Council year on year by eliminating the licence fees.

Upgrade Microsoft Windows / MS Office / MS exchange

In the case of a PC being setup as a simple workstation, then a free and open source Linux operating system (e.g. RedHat, CentOS, Ubuntu, etc) can often be used in place of Windows. While this does not eliminate all support costs associated with the PC, a significant saving is made on purchasing licensing to perform basic computing operations. In the case of Microsoft Office an obvious community alternative is LibreOffice which is maintained and supported by The Document Foundation. LibreOffice has extensive support for all of the current Microsoft file formats and is a simple and intuitive program to use. Another alternative might be Koffice which is supported and developed by the KDE community. Even Microsoft Exchange has free and open source competitors such as Kolab and Zentyal.

Project Management System – Procurement and Implementation

Odoo (https://www.odoo.com/ ), formerly known as OpenERP, is a full suite of business applications. It is built for collaborative project management, but also has all the traditional tools you'd expect like Gantt charts and control deadlines. For a more flexible approach to management Tuleap (https://www.tuleap.org/ ) allows for agile, traditional, hybrid, or custom processes for project management. Adopting one of these solutions may require customization but would be far less than the $150,000 proposed and would also aid the local economy and skills market by providing real work to local developers.

Research and Implementation of Mobile Device Management (MDM) software

Much of the proposed $370,000 to be spent on implementing MDM software could be saved by considering the WSO2 Enterprise Mobility Manager (http://wso2.com/products/enterprise-mobility-manager/ ). Even if minor customizations are required the cost would be less than the cost of implementing the system from scratch, in addition Council would reduce ongoing maintenance and support costs by sharing the burden with the community.

Upgrade to existing Human Resources Information System (HRIS) or New HRIS

Rather than spending $382,000 on reinventing HRIS, why not consider investing in the community by adopting iceHRM (https://github.com/gamonoid/icehrm/ ) or Waypoint HR (https://sourceforge.net/projects/waypointhr ). Other options also include OrangeHRM (http://www.orangehrm.com/ ), Sentrifugo (http://www.sentrifugo.com/ ) and A1-eHR (http://ehr.a1.io/ ).

Business process software purchases

We recommend Effektif (http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/business-transformation/press-releases/effektif-open-sources-bpm-software ) or Talend (https://www.talend.com/resource/business-management-process.html ).

PABX (Phone System) replacement

By adopting the Asterisk IP phone software for your IP PBX systems, VoIP gateways and conference services the Council could save much of the budgeted $100,000. Asterisk is Free and Open Source Software that can be installed on off-the-shelf hardware with no on going license fees (http://www.asterisk.org/ ).

In addition to specific projects and software packages, Free and Open Source Software helps enable many secondary benefits to the community and Council. Community engagement can more easily be fostered when a council uses open tools and data formats. Having software amenable to study and modification makes events like hackathons really deliver solutions that can be utilized. As noted above in many practical examples local developers, startups and entrepreneurs can also be stimulated while delivering real benefit to the Council. We also feel that it is in the interests of the community that software developed for the communities benefit also be licensed in such a way as to maximize the potential community benefit of the software being created. In line with this we believe that an free and open source licence be adopted or at least strongly suggested for the software.

With proprietary software, vendors make it difficult or impossible to use alternative systems. This is known as vendor lock-in. Microsoft changing its licensing so that users are charged not on how many people use it or the number of CPUs but the number of cores the CPU has is a concrete example of this strategy being put to use. The use of Free and Open standards and formats ensures that an organizations data and information is available and ready to use no matter what system or vendor Council chooses to use in the future.

Using FOSS does not mean that the Council will have to rely on internal resources or volunteers for support. Because the source code is openly available it is possible to gain development and training support locally though small to medium businesses in Australia and by doing so help pave some of the New Ways for the New Economy. By supporting Australian businesses the Council redirects ratepayers money away from multinational companies that pay little or no tax and instead stimulates the local economy by developing the growing technology sector.

The Casey Council would not be alone in adopting FOSS for eliminating licensing costs. Free and Open Source Software has already been adopted by governments throughout the world. In 2010, the Malaysian government reported that 703 out of its 724 agencies had migrated to open-source software. The Chief Secretary to the Government stated that, in comparison to legacy closed-source software, open-source software has “better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost” (https://opensource.org/node/535 ). Other government users of open-source software include Iceland, China, the City of Munich, several Indian States, the French Parliament and Gendarmerie and the United States Department of Defense. In addition, many of the most popular programs on desktop computers today are open-source, such as Firefox and VLC Media Player.

We also include a small list of success stories of other Government uses of Free and Open Source Software

The British MET office has been using open source software for over 10 years. (http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240151055/Met-Office-says-open-source-is-backbone-of-operations )

France’s second largest city adopts open source software for building and permit zone management. (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/open-source-wins-over-france%E2%80%99s-urban-planners )

The Italian city Vicenza plans to replace windows desktops with Linux Zorin OS. (https://itsfoss.com/vicenza-windows-zorin )

Open source and open data helped the people of Nepal during the 15th April 2015 earthquake disaster. (https://opensource.com/life/16/6/open-source-open-data-nepal-earthquake )

Finally we would like to have a representative from Free Software Melbourne talk briefly to the submission at the Casey city council meeting on the 28th June 2016.

Regards, Free Software Melbourne http://freesoftware.org.au