Maricopa County mtg report

[der.hans]

moin, moin,

sorry for taking so long to get this sent out.

Here are Lin's corrections/clarifications for my notes.

lin> As promised, here are the only clarifications I would make for you and
lin> complete for you.
lin>
lin> 	The other two women were Nancy Corbett and Mary Browning, both of my
lin> office.
lin>
lin> 	The company name is spelled McDonnell-Douglas.
lin>
lin> 	I was Chief Architect at M-D and was "among" the chief
lin> proponents/influencers for converging on UNIX.
lin>
lin> 	I was also a UNIX/C programmer for six years using several versions
lin> and being involved at all levels including the kernel and file system.
lin>
lin> 	Relative to architecture, I said it was not my prerogative to
lin> "override" the technology domain groups.
lin>
lin> 	The top award was the national Government Performance Project.  Here
lin> is their URL
lin>
lin>
lin> http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/gpp/County%27s_2002/Press_Releases/maricopa.ltr.pdf
lin>
lin> 	Out "A" rating for IT was only one of two given in the United
lin> States.
lin>
lin> 	Relative to XML, we are already using it in the Justice and Law
lin> Enforcement area.
lin>
lin> 	We are moving toward a "sophisticated seat management strategy".  We
lin> are not completely there yet, but have most of the pieces in place.
lin>
lin> 	The e-learning standard I referred to is indeed SCORM -- which is
lin> XML-based by the way.
lin>
lin> 	We generally publish RFPs which are platform neutral and then
lin> consider the various alternatives provided by the vendor responses.
lin>
lin> 	The layered design product with Websphere is spelled "Versata".
lin>
lin> 	The unawareness regarding XML and spreadsheets was for me only.  I
lin> have come to learn that my staff is aware of that.  Thus it is me and not
lin> "they".
lin>
lin> 	Relative to proficiency with MS tools (e.g. Office), some jobs
lin> require proficiency--certainly not all jobs.
lin>
lin> 	Paul was being funny about the County being a "figment".  All
lin> counties in Arizona are considered extensions of the state with varying
lin> degrees of independence based upon the particular function.
lin>
lin> 	The $100M annual IT budget to which I refer includes labor and
lin> non-labor, both operational and capital investment.

I apologize for the info I noted incorrectly and thank Lin and Paul for
reviewing my notes and getting me the corrections.

ciao,

der.hans

Am 09. Jul, 2002 schwätzte der.hans so:

> moin, moin,
>
> OK, I took notes. Don't tell any of my profs, I'd hate to ruin my reputation
> :).
>
> This is meant to be a factual report as well as I can relate it. I'm trying
> to avoid any personal coloring of what was said. There are likely to be
> imperfections in my reporting, but it should be fairly accurate.
>
>
>
> Initially Paul Allsing was at the podium with a welcome. He also introd a
> few other people. First was Wes Baysinger who's in charge of procurement and
> materials management.
>
> Next was Jan Neal, who is an internal IT consultant.
>
> Finally Paul introd Lin Thatcher, the CIO.
>
> There were two other women from the county there, but they weren't introd.
>
> We had 23, but with the almost 4 to 1 majority we foolishly didn't call for
> a spot vote on what OS to use in the future :).
>
> Both Paul and Lin have tech backgrounds. Paul used to code. Lin worked as a
> system architect for McDonald-Douglas. He says he was the chief proponent
> for McD-D to move to *NIX.
>
> After the intros, Paul turned the podium over to Lin, who handled the
> county's presentation and fielded most of our questions.
>
> Lin mentioned that the current IT strategies go back about 7 years. He
> mentioned that the county has 14 architectural domains. Example domains
> would be the PC LAN architecture and the server architecture.
>
> Lin said it is not the CIO office's perogative to force domains to use a
> particular architecture.
>
> Maricopa County shares top billing with Fairfax County, .va.us, for some
> gov't efficiency award related to the IT group.
>
> Maricopa County is a premier customer of the Gartner Group. The county has
> access to contact any of the Gartner Group's consultants. Lin was recently
> at a Gartner Group conference or something. At that conference he saw a
> Star Office demo. He also was told that an enterprise the size of Maricopa
> County should be using both J2EE and .NET. Maricopa County is planning on
> using both. He said that he also learned a small company such as the one
> Matt Alexander works at should be doing something like what Matt's done,
> e.g. LTSP and run m$ apps via GNU/Linux emulators.
>
> Maricopa County is considering using XML as a data storage format and as a
> data presentation format, e.g. XML to the web browser.
>
> Lin said every corporation has to pick out who it's strategic vendors
> are. Maricopa County has, for instance, m$, HP and IBM. Lin also pointed out
> that IBM uses m$ on their desktops and also lists m$ as a strategic vendor
> as well as having a group based in Seattle.
>
> m$ gets less than 5% of the total IT budget. 50% of that budget is for
> labor, e.g. salaries.
>
> The overriding architecture principle guiding Maricopa County's IT plans is:
> it's more important that the pieces work together than it is to have the
> best individual pieces.
>
> Maricopa County has to hook up data internally and with other gov't bodies,
> e.g state and fed ( FBI ).
>
> Maricopa county plans on a 3 year life-cycle for desktops and 2 years for
> laptops. That doesn't imply machines have to be replaced, though. Paul
> mentioned current reasons for replacing machines include features like wake
> on LAN cards to allow remote updates at night when the worker isn't using
> the desktop.
>
> Maricopa County has a 'sophisticated seat management strategy'. Each dept
> gets one monthly bill for their computers that includes the computers, the
> software and support from the IT dept.
>
> Maricopa County averages less than 1% of the average persons salary for
> software on the desktop.
>
> Maricapa County tries to be in the moddle of the technology adoption curve,
> e.g. behind the bleeding edge and early adopters.
>
> Maricopa County tries to keep software on the box as long as possible. They
> are currently standardized on m$ office 97.
>
> Lin mentioned that they are almost constantly at war with m$. He also
> mentioned that the IT group works very hard to be 'vendor neutral'.
>
> Maricopa County wants to put it's efforts into things like business
> processes, business design, horizontal workflow, and webs ( MC-speak for
> intranet ).
>
> Maricopa County uses 3 major *NIX flavors. They get *NIX from Data General,
> HP and IBM. HP is predominant in justice and law enforcement, with Informix
> as the database engine. The county uses HP OpenView.
>
> Lin mentioned that many back end services available for purchase assume m$
> on the desktop.
>
> One of the emerging concerns for Maricapa County is e-learning. They
> mentioned AICC and STORM ( SCORM? ).
>
> Maricapa County has no GNU/Linux in production. During the Q and A period
> they mentioned some internal experiments being lead by their 'Linux
> champion', Derek Neighbors. Paul mentioned an internal web request system
> and some file/print sharing experiments. There are no immediate plans to
> deploy GNU/Linux to production, but the web request system looks like a good
> candidate for the function it's supposed to implement.
>
> Maricopa County sends out RFPs ( Request For Proposal ) seeking a certain
> functionality. Vendors then respond with solutions that might require a
> specific platform. The county has to have personel who know the platform.
>
> Paul said there are thousands of potential attack attempts per day on
> Maricopa County systems. Lin said the county has never been cracked or had a
> major virus infection. He mentioned that the county goes to great effort to
> prevent viruses.
>
> Maricopa County is using IBM's websphere with versada. In other words
> they're using J2EE. They will also using .NET.
>
> Lin said the m$ enterprise agreement is negotiated by the state.
>
> The average local gov't IT expenditure is 9% of the budget, but Maricopa
> County only allocates about 5% of its budget to IT. Lin reminded us that
> even with the percentage-wise small budget Maricopa County still won the IT
> award mentioned earlier.
>
> There were reiterations that m$ gives Maricopa County huge price breaks and
> that Maricopa County is a large customer.
>
> Bill Lindley brought the potential of not being able to read data in the
> future because of obsolescence. He asked about not being able to read
> proprietary formats in the future.
>
> The response was that the only allowed 'archival' formats are paper and
> microfiche, so electronic data format is irrelevant. Maricopa County has
> many, many paper records stored by Iron Mountain.
>
> der.hans asked about saving data in XML format, even when using m$
> office. They were not aware that spreadsheet data could also be saved as
> XML. der.hans mentioned that gnumeric uses compressed ( using an open
> compression mechanism ) XML by default. He also mentioned he thought m$
> excel could save as XML. This was all in reference to having data in open
> formats, rather than proprietary binary formats.
>
> Paul mentioned that updating from m$ office 97 might allow them to
> standardize on XML as a data-storage format for internal use. Archive is
> paper. Public use is currently PDF.
>
> One person made a reference to not being able to fill out online PDF forms
> except with m$ ie and Adobe acrobat for m$ operating systems. Paul said he
> was unaware of that problem and would look into it. He said Maricopa County
> had been getting quotes of $70,000 to make forms, but could pretty well do
> it for 'free' with PDF. Free relies on the fact that Maricopa County has
> already bought licenses for Adobe products allowing the creation of PDF
> files as PDF is what the county has standardized on for publicly available
> forms.
>
> Wes said he had thought about the meeting over the weekend and said he only
> remembers 2 debarments in his 15 years with Maricapa County.
>
> Tpopped outhey mentioned that Maricapa County's attorney general's office was asked about debarment. That office asked the state's attorney general's office, which in turn asked an association for state attorney generals. The response that fed back down the chain was to wait. The case is going into the punishment phase. They don't know if there will be a case for debarment. They're afraid of being sued by m$.
>
> Maricopa County's employees have spent years using the m$ desktop and that
> is a significant expenditure of county resources to gain the proficiency
> they have.
>
> Maricopa County presumes that most people have m$ at home and have used it
> at previous jobs. They require m$ proficiency to get a job. They do try
> to make sure that public services are available for people using other
> platforms.
>
> Maricopa County leases to own the software from m$. They will most likely
> be signing a 3 year enterprise agreement with m$. After that agreement the
> county will own licenses ( e.g. not rentware ) for whatever the most recent
> release available at the end of the lease is for those software seats and
> titles. They own their current licenses and could stay with what they have
> if they didn't have other reasons to update.
>
> Matt Alexander summarized his experience with LTSP. That project was
> started at the request of his employer as a result of the new m$ licensing
> strategy. Matt pointed out the amount his employer has saved ( $20,000?
> ) and how Maricopa County could obviously save even more due to the much
> larger scale. Lin and Paul once again pointed out that the amount of money
> given to m$ is less than 5% of the IT budget and that they feel they have
> been quite effective in purchasing the software they use.
>
> Before the end of the meeting Paul had already cancelled a 10:00 appt he was
> missing to be in with us. Lin had to leave by 10:30.
>
> der.hans interrupted Lin as he was closing after the last question in order
> to get in a thank you from the group for the time and response from the
> CIO's office. He re-emphasized that the general consensus of those present
> and those that had written was to learn about Maricopa County's situation
> and to find out how they can help.
>
> After Lin wrapped up by thanking those present for showing up a couple of
> members of the staff stayed in the room to continue answering questions in
> smaller groups. Paul Allsing didn't leave until everyone was finished with
> their questions.
>
> In conclusion, the CIO's team emphasized that they see m$ as the only
> option for the desktop and see no reason at this time to try anything
> else. They also do not feel it is appropriate at this time to seek to debar
> m$ from being a contractor for Maricopa County. They do see m$ as one of
> the possibly, but certainly not as the only viable, vendors for non-desktop
> purposes.
>
>
> The above started out roughly in chronological order of points made, but the
> end is a jumble time-wise. Many comments got grouped together with similar
> topics as the original topics were introduced. Most of the information came
> from Lin.
>
>
> Stats that came up:
>
> Maricopa County is larger, by population, than 17 states.
> Maricopa County has 12,000 desktops and laptops.
> Maricopa County has approx 500 technologists working for it.
> Maricopa County is a figment of our imagination. The county doesn't have a government. Maricopa County is a sub-group within the state government.
> Maricopa County has 12,000 employees. The state government has 30,000.
> Maricapa County's IT budget is approximately $100 million.
> Gartner says enterprises with more than 5,000 employees should use both J2EE and .NET.
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans
>

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#  https://www.LuftHans.com/
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