A friend has told me that the Dutch government has issued a tender that blatantly violateds the government's own open standards statements or policies. It's a tender from about 7 ministries for 22,000 desktop computers with specific references to MS technologies such as Active Directory when LDAP would suffice.
The tender's called "GOUD" and the choice of technologies is expected to be used by the government for the next 5-10 years.
This could be stopped either by writing to the Dutch government or to the European Commission, but writing such a letter takes work to find the relevent Dutch government policies or European laws, who to send it to etc.
If we want a government to take a stand against rigged tenders, the Dutch government seems a good candidate due to it's outspoken support of open standards.
Is anyone interested in working on this? (or does anyone know of free software supporters already working on it?)
Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
A friend has told me that the Dutch government has issued a tender that blatantly violateds the government's own open standards statements or policies. It's a tender from about 7 ministries for 22,000 desktop computers with specific references to MS technologies such as Active Directory when LDAP would suffice.
The tender's called "GOUD" and the choice of technologies is expected to be used by the government for the next 5-10 years.
This could be stopped either by writing to the Dutch government or to the European Commission, but writing such a letter takes work to find the relevent Dutch government policies or European laws, who to send it to etc.
If we want a government to take a stand against rigged tenders, the Dutch government seems a good candidate due to it's outspoken support of open standards.
Is anyone interested in working on this? (or does anyone know of free software supporters already working on it?)
Hi Ciaran,
A few parities have been working on informing the government about open-standards and free software. The problem is that there there are too many stakeholders that are forcing Microsoft technologies. A lot of parties still don't see the need for change.
We are kind of waiting for a little Microsoft/security/document disaster to wakeup decision makers so they finally see the need and change there policy's. There is also a lot of talking but too little actual work being done and lack of any official public support.
So it's not a pretty situation, and a lot of work and attitude change is needed
A few parties working on it are the people working for the below websites:
http://www.livre.nl/ http://dewinter.com/ http://gendo.nl/ http://webwereld.nl/
Kind regards,
Jelle de Jong
Thanks for the 3 responses I've gotten privately.
Mailing the list is a much better way to inform people who might be able to work on this, but if you need to be anonymous then private mail is fine (and I'll forward the information to the list).
Here's a list (possibly incomplete) of the tender documents: http://www.minfin.nl/nl/actueel/nieuwsberichten,2008/02/GOUD-stukken-naar-Tw...
Analysis of the letter sent to parlaiment by Finance Minister Bos who is responsable for the tender: http://www.gendo.nl/GOUD_reactie_op_brief_aan_Tweedekamer
Here is an article by Brenno de Winter from January 30th which led to questions in the Dutch parliament: http://webwereld.nl/articles/49636/aanbesteding-overheidsdesktop-trekt-micro...
Previous questions were answered by the Minister for finance: http://webwereld.nl/articles/50033/heemskerk (This February 25th article seems to have ended a lot of the discussion that was happending before.)
Two related blog posts with information: http://www.kmphs.com/ak/2008/06/linuxtag-presen.html http://www.kmphs.com/ak/2008/03/goldmember-desk.html
Possible actions: Write to Benno de Winter? Ask him for advice? Wait for another mistake so that we can exploit it in the media?
On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 02:00:13PM +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
Here's a list (possibly incomplete) of the tender documents:
There is a new article today about the "goud" tender.
http://webwereld.nl/articles/51870/minister--goud-niet-duurder-door-vlucht-l...
This article tells that the result of this tender is not more expensive because only two suppliers made a offer. The other three refused to make an offer.