[ILUG] Revenue on Line Service - Tax returns Only Windows or Mac supported

[Ciaran Mulloy]

I think the petition is a great idea! From my experience with government 
departments the only thing that counts is the "thickness of the file" so for 
any petition to work we would have to get certainly a good number of people 
to sign the petition. 
Also we would need to work out the right pressure angle
for example: "Building the most visable and tangible part of e-government (ie 
Revenue Collection) on the back of proprietary standards is not a good idea 
for the following reasons:
*	It locks the government into a particular vendor solution with unknown 
future cost implications therefore it guarantees higher costs both for the 
users, government (and tax payer).
*	It denies full access to certain computer users thus discriminating against 
some citizens on the basis of the OS they use.
*	The well publicised insecurity aspects of using proprietary OS may well slow 
down the take up of the service.
*	To use the ROS requires users to purchase and install insecure and unsafe 
OS's thus raising the costs of transaction.
*	It goes against the principles laid out by the EU by IDA (Interchange of 
Data between Administrations) an EU Commission body 
(http://europa.eu.int/ida/) supporting the use of open source and interchange 
of information between agencies in the EU.
*	It creates a national reliance on one or two US corporations which in itself 
carries many associated risks.
*	The government should be vendor and system neutral, I am sure there is 
something in Constitution about this.
*	Building a national infrastructure on a proprietary basis is not a very 
clever thing to do. Witness the recent e-voting shambles and the embarrising 
climbdown not to mention the waste of taxpayers' money.
*	The ROS has been held up to be an early and ground breaking service in 
e-government, if other e-government services were to emulate the proprietary 
nature of this service then it would surely be a backward step.

Maybe there are other arguments as well that people might be able to add. 
Indeed some of these points be put more cogently. 

I would welcome any suggestions or observations.

Ciaran Mulloy


On Wednesday 20 October 2004 11:00, John Moylan wrote:
> Maybe we could get a petition together.
>
> John
>
> Rory McCann wrote:
> > On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:50:02 +0100, Ciaran Mulloy <cmulloy at esatclear.ie> 
wrote:
> >>Hi,
> >>I recently tried to use the Revenue on Line serivce (ROS) to be told that
> >> it only supports Windows or Mac.
> >> http://www.ros.ie/info/faq_systemreq.html
> >>
> >>It seems a little extreme to have to buy another operating system in
> >> order to file one's taxes (doing it is unpleasant enough!).
> >
> > Ah but according to the answer to question 1 "Any software which you
> > need to run the system is available free of charge." :)
> >
> >>I was told by the Revenue people that there wasn't enough demand for the
> >>service.
> >>
> >>Is this a burning issue for anyone else?
> >>--
> >>Regards,
> >>
> >>Ciaran Mulloy,
> >>email: cmulloy at esatclear.ie
> >>--
> >>Irish Linux Users' Group
> >>http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug/
> >
> > Rory
>
> ***************************************************************************
>*** The information in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally
> privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this e-mail
> by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any
> disclosure, copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be
> taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful.
> Please note that emails to, from and within RTE may be subject to the
> Freedom of Information Act 1997 and may be liable to disclosure.
> ***************************************************************************
>***

-- 
Regards,
Ciaran Mulloy,
Mobile: +353 87 251 3155
Home: +353 1 288 4900
email: cmulloy at esatclear.ie