It would probably take decades to unplug older systems but with a gradual approach we could probably get rid of most of it quite fast.
I wonder how much public money is wasted in Microsoft crapware, but if any of it would be redirected to open source fundings (which is actual common good) it may be a huge deal.
Much of the software, especially stuff that the likes of Microsoft provide, already exists, and is already in use. In fact plenty of local administrations have been railing against the EU commission and their insistence on .docx and stuff.
OTOH it’s not trivial to implement, not in the software sense but the institutional one: It doesn’t matter that software that can map complex administrative workflows already exists, you still have to take that stuff and build whatever workflow some agency uses into it.
You also don’t need your own servers, there’s public law hosting providers around. E.g. northern German states founded dataport, if you’re a municipality there it’s a no-brainer to get your software and your cloud, consulting, everything, from them. It’s going to be better than anything you could come up with because you’re not the first municipality to contract with them.
It would probably take decades to unplug older systems but with a gradual approach we could probably get rid of most of it quite fast.
I wonder how much public money is wasted in Microsoft crapware, but if any of it would be redirected to open source fundings (which is actual common good) it may be a huge deal.
Much of the software, especially stuff that the likes of Microsoft provide, already exists, and is already in use. In fact plenty of local administrations have been railing against the EU commission and their insistence on .docx and stuff.
OTOH it’s not trivial to implement, not in the software sense but the institutional one: It doesn’t matter that software that can map complex administrative workflows already exists, you still have to take that stuff and build whatever workflow some agency uses into it.
You also don’t need your own servers, there’s public law hosting providers around. E.g. northern German states founded dataport, if you’re a municipality there it’s a no-brainer to get your software and your cloud, consulting, everything, from them. It’s going to be better than anything you could come up with because you’re not the first municipality to contract with them.