[ILUG] Mary Hanafins progress report, New connections

[James McCarthy]

Ask the minister to define exactly what are the open standards & what
the governemt considers open standards?

Ask if the future software updates will be support these open
standard?(such as MS Longhorn)


The government is entitled to use what
software it likes.  However, it must not make decisions which mandate
that citizens use the same in order to interoperate. 
This absolutely excludes use of closed standard, vendor specific, file
formats such as .doc, .xls, .mdb, .pps

and closed extensions to open standards such as Office 2003's extension
of XML.

If they did insist on this policy MS Office would be a seriously useless
solution.



Ask the Minster has she considerd mixing the use of Open Source software
& proprietry software if an Open Source only solution is too exspensive?




Ask the minister are these open standards the same as that of the rest
of the EU, are they compatible?

Ask the Minister provide the report/documentation as to where the
government 'looked' into the total cost of ownership of Open Source
solutions.


Ask the minister if she would consider the setting up of a permament
commision consisting of individuals skilled in the sector of I.T. to
decide the purchase of all I.T. provisions for the government based on
technical & economic details. 

Thanks for the input, anything else to pollish it up?