County Meeting

[Robert Bushman]

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Bill Nash wrote:

> 	It still is a worthy project.

Agreed.

> How do ants defeat a bear?

By dedicating enormous resources (relative to
their available resources) for very long periods
of time. This is worthwhile if the bear has the
highest ROI relative to other targets of
opportunity.

> The big problem with this: How important are county docs to us? I,
> personally, never look at them.

Moreover, how important is Maricopa County as a
migration target? Are there other targets that
could provide a higher ROI?

> The needs and efficiency of the county, as
> they service the community, must come first.

Very agreed. I think this is what so firmly entrenches
their position. Right now, Maricopa has hard numbers
showing that their technology strategy, including their
alliance with Microsoft, is working. I think that
some of the assumptions that lead to those numbers
are inaccurate, but I can't show hard numbers - yet.

> Start going after other offices.

There are many targets of opportunity in Maricopa
County - private, public, and individual. If we
get the populace of Maricopa County up to 10%
Linux deployed on the desktop, with a 90% success
rate, will Maricopa be able to defend it's
Microsoft-centricity?

> 	Lastly, don't succumb to the base desire to mope and whine over
> the setback. Big deal, they're firmly entrenched in the Microsoft camp.

Completely agreed. There will be wins and there
will be losses. Given the overwhelming numerical
superiority of the enemy, we should expect to face
many pitched battles.

> Consider this to be a large scale conflict
> that will take time and energy to overcome,

Hear, Hear

> What's the goal? From my point of view, it's
> getting trusted technologies in the hands of our government

To me, it's increasing the deployment of open technology.
MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw general purpose
computing. Microsoft is trying to outlaw Free software.
Increasing the deployment of Linux is, IMO, one of the
few ways we can stop these efforts. Stopping these
efforts is imperative.

> 	Once you have a goal, you need a plan.

I want to make Install Fest large and self-sustaining.

> Any plan requires information, and that means reconnaisance and
> assessment. Keep in mind,
> Microsoft isn't inherently the enemy here: It's closed source tools and
> proprietary technology. Every battlefield has crucial points to be
> controlled and held, and in our case, it's going to be information
> repositories. A key point to consider is that the county has deployed
> technology for one major factor: efficiency. Other factors, such as cost,
> increased efficiency, seamless integration, and most importantly security
> are the crucial points we want to target:
>
> 1: What information does the county keep that we, as citizens, consider to
> be vital? Where does security become vital?
> 	- This is a sticky argument, since we are dealing with public
> data. I think the key points are that data should be safeguarded from
> tampering/corruption, and access to important data be logged and
> monitored, or publicized.
>
> 2: What county offices are centered around collecting, storing, and using
> that data? What offices do they interact with?
>
> 3: What requirements are those offices held to for securing that data?
> Who can access it? What technologies are used to secure it?
> 	- What is the security rating/history of those technologies? You
> and I both know MS is rife for various worm and distributed attacks.
>
> 4: Where can Open Source technology fit that MS cannot or will not
> support? Where can Open Source handle the same work with greater
> efficiency and security?

Maricopa County's view of information repositories is
that they fall into three categories:
- long term: Iron Mountain, paper and microfiche (state mandated)
- short term: tactical/transient, proprietary is OK
- public: PDF is open

RE: Long Term:
If we could get State to accept an electronic format for
long term storage, we could specify an open format. We
would have to solve the issue of future-proofing the
media. If you can solve the, "leave it sitting in a cave
for 1000 years, then read it" problem, it would be a
major first step.

RE: Short Term:
Bill Lindley brought this up. County sounded pretty firm
in it's belief that for transient documents, proprietary
formats are fine. We pressed them on it, and they didn't
budge.

> A good place to start assessing is simply reading departmental reports
> that are available. Go over the budgets and see where technology spending
> and staff training is going. Do some comparison shopping and start keeping
> score. Support figures and license costs are good things to watch for.
> Equipment outlay is another.

If Maricopa is an entrenched opponent, and we are
a guerrilla force, and there are other targets of
opportunity, is fighting the pitched battle
against Maricopa the right investment of resources?

> know that Unix based OS's can extend the usability of some hardware even
> further, without a degree of slowness noticeable to the average user.
> I'm thinking about mail servers as I write this.

Firewalls, fax servers, static document servers, print
servers, routers, - virtually any non-GUI process that
is not processor intensive.

> All this said, it's a big battlefield. Where to begin?

Install Fest 2 :)