Dear CIO/IT managers,
This CPTTM CIO newsletter is to bring useful news to you, CIO/IT managers in Macau, for references without obligations, so that you can do your jobs easier and better! Hope you like it. if you'd like to unsubscribe or recommend your friends to subscribe, just let me know. Old issues are available here.
Kent Tong, Editor in ChiefCPTTM started its migration to OpenOffice in 2003 and it has taken 2 years to finish. All 60+ employees have been migrated. Limited copies of MS Office are kept: Each department is allowed to have a computer with MS Office installed for emergency; Selected computers are made available for hosting a few legacy in-house MS Access applications.
The primary objectives of the migration are:
The primary risk involved in the project is the compatibility of OpenOffice with MS Office file formats and the related support workload. How serious is it? From our IT incident log, from Feb 2006 to now (April 2007), at Cyber-Lab (8 users), we had 41 reported incidents on OpenOffice, accounting for 11% of our total incidents. Among the OpenOffice incidents, 32 (78%) were caused by the user (e.g., not knowing how to do something); 9 (22%) were really caused by OpenOffice itself. That 9 incidents can be considered compatibility issues. Here is the summary:
| Numbers of incidents for the period | Numbers of incidents per month for a 8-user department | |
| All OpenOffice incidents | 41 | 2.9 |
| Incidents caused by user errors or lack of training | 32 | 2.3 |
| Incidents caused by incompatibility | 9 | 0.6 |
Note that this data is after the migration. During the migration one would expect more support issues. In addition, some CPTTM users not working at Cyber-Lab may also report to us directly, increasing the number of incidents. So, the actual incident count for a 8-user department should be somewhat less than 0.6 per month.
We also have some slides showing how we managed the migration process.
Due to customer demand, Dell is going to preload Linux on its home and office desktop PC. I think preloading by itself is not that important. The most important point is that it will ensure its hardware has Linux drivers. This in turn will create a compelling incentive for its parts suppliers and its competitors (e.g., HP) to do the same. Then every Linux users will benefit.
One of the best practices in ITIL is "Your unit should have a measurable service agreement with other units in the company that you reply on". For example, at CPTTM, we have a centralized department purchasing IT equipment for us. With the support from our top management, they have agreed to:
If you're the centralized purchasing department, why should you try to impose yourself to "restrictions" like this? Here are some benefits:
Yet another state in US is proposing a bill to adopt ODF. In addition, it gives a strong preference to a format for which there are free of charge implementations.
| Country/region | Adoption status |
| Malaysia | Plans to adopt ODF as a national standard by the end of 2006 |
| Brazil | Recommends ODF in its Interoperability Framework and marks DOC as "in transition" |
| Belgium | All document exchanges with the government must be in ODF from Sept. 2008 |
| Denmark | Government publishing in ODF (along with HTML, PDF and DOC) from Sept. 2007 |
| Italy | Adopts ODF as a national standard |
| Hong Kong | Added ODF to its list of supported formats in its Interoperability Framework |
| Switzerland | Considering using ODF for use in its government |
| State of Massachusetts, US | All desktops in the state government will use ODF by Jan. 2007 |
| State of Texas, US | Bill proposed to mandate the use of ODF in the state government |
| State of Minnesota, US | Bill proposed to mandate the use of ODF in the state government |
| State of California, US | Bill proposed to mandate the use of ODF in the state government |
| State of Oregon, US |
Bill proposed to mandate the use of ODF in the state government |
Any questions, ideas or experiences to share? Contact me at 28781313 or kent at cpttm dot org dot mo.
Until next time,
Kent Tong