California - Open or Closed Source?

IT VENDORS have been fleecing governments mercilessly ever since Herman Hollerith leveraged his monopoly won in the 1890 US Census to overcharge the government in 1900. While US, UK, and other national agencies hold the dubious distinctions for wasting the most money on IT projects gone awry, perhaps no government has a more spectacular record of galloping IT procurement fiasco's than the State of California.

Now Open Source advocates are pressing the California government to require that Public software employ Open Source -- or at least adhere to open standards. Of course, proprietary software vendors are fighting this idea tooth and nail... with some help from the Bush Administration.

Following the slow-motion train wreck at the Department of Motor Vehicles in 1987-1993, which cost more than $44 million for no working system, and an even larger mess at Health and Human Services, which cost taxpayers over $122 million (and maybe more than $266 million including Federal penalties), plus a failed Department of Corrections inmate-tracking project that burned up about $41 million, California established a new Department of Information Technology (DoIT) in 1996 to oversee all IT procurements and prevent similar project debacles.

As essentially a staff agency without its own data centers or powerful State agency clients, California's DoIT worked with IT bureaucrats for several years -- monitoring IT projects, reviewing contracts, playing its oversight role. Then, just as it started to become more assertive in attempting to direct statewide IT policy, it fell on its face.

Last year the California DoIT signed a contract for Oracle DBMS software that would have cost the State at least $95 million and perhaps more than $126 million. Oracle's reseller Logicon claimed this would save the State $16 million, but it might have actually cost the State $41 million more than necessary -- especially considering that Oracle sold more licenses than California has State employees. The State Auditor's report was unflinching if not scathing, and that -- plus some political embarrassment over an ill-timed campaign contribution from Oracle to the Governor's office -- led to the DoIT Director's quick suspension and later resignation, cancellation of Oracle's contract, the closure of DoIT last July, and ultimately California's ignominious retreat back to separate control of IT projects by individual State agencies, as reported by ComputerWorld here.

So, the State of California has pissed away over $200 million on failed IT projects in the last 15 years, tried to impose some discipline on IT procurements (but failed at that too), and now appears primed to waste more taxpayers money, hand over fist, just like in the bad old days.

At the end of the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, some Open Source activists held a march to promote the idea that governments should use Open Source software rather than proprietary alternatives. They're trying to get a bill, called the Digital Software Security Act, sponsored in the California State Legislature to require the use of Open Source software in all Public IT systems.

The proprietary software companies, led by Microsoft, have meanwhile established a coalition to oppose Open Source use in governments, the Initiative for Software Choice.

They've got the Bush Administration on their side too, as revealed by the US Ambassador to Peru writing a letter to their legislature opposing consideration of Open Source for government systems in that country.

And Bruce Perens (an OSI founder who is leaving his "Linux Evangelist" position at HP to become more politically involved) has a less radical suggestion involving interoperability and open standards. An article at the San Francisco Chronicle covers his Sincere Choice alternative proposal here.

Intuition says this particular debate is just starting to warm up. It promises to be interesting and perhaps even profound, at least for IT costs yet to be paid in coming decades by California taxpayers....µ