The entire State of Pahang moves to OpenOffice.org

Its just been made official that the State of Pahang is migrating all its productivity suites to OpenOffice.org. This succint memo from the State Secretary of Pahang entitled "Perlaksanaan Penggunaan Perisian OpenOffice.Org Di Semua Agensi dan Pentadbiran Negeri" (translated: "Implementing the use of OpenOffice.org suite in all State Agencies and Administrative centres") outlines the reasons for migrating, the benefits and how to proceed.

Here's my rather rough translation from Bahasa Malaysia to English. Apologies in advance (corrections are welcomed):

Distributed to:

All State Head of Departments

All District Officers

All Head of Units
Secretariat Office for the government of Pahang

Implementing the use of OpenOffice.org office in all state agencies and administration

1. Purpose

1.1 The purpose of this memo is to ensure the usage of OpenOffice.org for office automation in the administrative offices of the State of Pahang.

2. Background

2.1 OpenOffice.org is one of choices of software for office administration or Office Suite. It features and integrated suite for word processing, spreadsheets, slides and database.

2.2 OpenOffice.org can be used in different operating systems like 'Windows', 'Linux', 'Solaris', 'Mac OS' and 'FreeBSD'

2.3 OpenOffice.org is distributed for free and represents a suite which is on par with other office suite software applications.

2.4 The main objectives for the use of the OpenOffice.org suite are:

2.4.1 It is easy to use and ensures that civil servants are not left behind in the ICT field;

2.4.2 It encourages civil servants to use the latest software available to help and facilitate daily tasks;

2.4.3 To help the State Government save ICT costs; and

2.4.4 To encourage the use of software based on open source.

2.5 Additional advantages of using OpenOffice.org are:

2.5.1 This suite is easy to obtain and distributed for free

2.5.2 It is an integrated suite. All the needs for office work, from typing letters, preparing charts, preparing presentations, saving data and other uses of office documents can be done using OpenOffice.org

2.5.3 OpenOffice.org can read file formats like DOC, XLS, PPT and files created by Microsoft Office from previous to current versions. It can also save in Microsoft Office formats;

2.5.4 The OpenOffice.org file formats are small because it uses XML compared to other software which uses binary formats; and

2.5.5 The cost savings from the ICT maintenance can be realized, as this suite does not require paid licenses.

3. Implementation

3.1 Usage of OpenOffice.org is encouraged for all civil servants who use ICT devices supplied by the State Government in all offices of the State of Pahang

3.2 All Head of Departments are required to ensure that the implementation of the usage of OpenOffice.org suite occurs smoothly and all computers in departments should be prevented from using any form of software that does not have a valid license. The State Government will not be responsible in the event that an audit finds software in use without a valid license.

4. Effective Date

4.1 This circular is in effect from the date of this letter (7th August 2008)

"Serving our Country"

*signed*

Dato' Muhammad Saifan bin Ismail, DSAP., DIMP., AAP., AMP)

State Secretary of Pahang

The driving force for this migration seems to be cost of proprietary software and the fear of unlicensed software. OpenOffice.org is the obvious solution to these two pressing problems (thanks, BSA!) What is good is that they have chosen ODF by default, and they are not changing the file format to the binary proprietary ones.

What is interesting is that the public sector in Malaysia is moving towards FOSS independently from any government directive or mandate, so no amount of whining would derail our government from choosing and making their choice. Its a simple business decision, and the market has decided.

State Governments are faced with the reality that software costs money, and they would rather use the money saved with FOSS rather than flashy and bloated software, on better things.

Now I wonder if tomorrow, Microsoft will 'extend' their RM99 Microsoft Office Home & Student license for 3 computers to these Government officials now. Or maybe even better;  USD5 per seat? Any takers?

Bye bye fat margins, you've been commoditized!

yk

[Update 9:45am 14 August 2008: Thanks to MingShi for the better translations!]

Comments

[dario balozzi]

thank you yoon

very good news !!!!!

greetings from argentina

--dario

[Wu MingShi]

Semua Ketua Unit
Pejabat Setiausaha Kerajaan Pahang

Should be translated to

All Head of Units
Secretariat Office for the government of Pahang

I think the second line is important and should not be omitted.

---

Missing Subject Line:

Implementing the use of OpenOffice.org office in all state agencies and administration

---

4. Tarikh kuatkuasa

Surat perkeliling ini berkuatkuasa mulai tarikh surat ini dikeluarkan

"4. Effective date

This circular is in effect from the date of this letter"

----

OK. This is a matter of taste:

"Berkhidmat untuk negara"

I would translate as

"Serving our country"

[Fiu Lon]

"Bye bye fat margins", that sounds good. The Domino effect does take place and has positive effects for all public procurement agencies worldwide. Choosing OpenOffice is a commercially wise decision indeed. And now we are in a stage where migration to OO.org is easier than migration to Office07 with its "improved" interface that requires sooo much costly retraining.

[sileNT]

Soon, they may realize they don't need a license for MS Windows, either, and install Linux instead...

[Jose_X]

>> Soon, they may realize they don't need a license for MS Windows, either, and install Linux instead...

Yes, not sure why they aren't deploying over Linux or other FOSS Platforms. Running software that hooks into closed systems should be avoided for security reasons if for nothing else. It should always be a serious exception to allow closed source, and, generally, the most important sw is the operating system.

Thanks for the translation. That was a good idea.

[Roy Schestowitz]

Great news. Your efforts are paying off.

[jairo mayorga]

WELLL, GOOD
UBUNTU, UBUNTU

[WebForms Howto]

This is a great move! However, from personal experience and some of friends, openoffice cause slight reduction in productivity. Even after several years use by computer veterans. I switched back to MS Office.

I do not want to start a flame war, but why dont you try Openoffice yourself.

The slight reduction is OK with govt. Hence this is a very smart move.

However, as for commercial use (like myself), even a 5% reduction in productivity will cause a huge amount of eventually.

In the end, the money we 'saved' will be lost in the of "5% productivity reduction".

Note: I am a linux and open source fan. (I use Ubuntu & SME Server).

[kaeru]

@WebForms that's very anecdotal "5% reduction in production". One can just as easily say, that "users in Pahang have 30% increase in productivity, since without slow virus scanners, each time they open a document it's 30% faster therefore allowing them to be more productive". Also since vim has different modes, allowing me to navigate faster and has an interface that purely focuses on text editing. I say for "writers vim is 80% more productive than any word processor".

None of these figures can be used as a general use case. Hence the case studies to see the actual impact in different scenarios of the move to OpenOffice.org and/or Open Source Software.

[Rick Jelliffe]

And note that ODF and OOXML are not part of the equation as such.

The drivers for adopting FOSS software are not being impacted by ODF and OOXML standardization in any negative way; indeed, it is the opposite: the more information about the various formats that can be extracted, the better the quality of import/export which *is* a consideration.

[yoonkit]

Hi Rick,

While it is true that the file format (ODF) was not a major factor in the decision, it did warrant its own point 2.5.4.

On a few informal interviews with the stakeholders, it was clear that they weren't too concerned on standardising on ODF; to them it is just another format to use.

However they definitely aren't using OOXML. Their IT support guys are not changing the default file format from ODF.

yk.

[kc]

I had used openoffice since it was called staroffice before sun system took over it and I had not looked back. Once I was forced to use a fren's laptop installed with MS Office07 and it was nightmare searching for its functions. So I guess once we get use to it, the question of productivity doesn't arise. Although I do agree that some very very advanced features are not available for OOorg but most of the time there are workarounds that will still get things work.