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On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 12:32 PM, tom brough <tombrough@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > After suffering 10+ years of working for Torbay Council's IT department. > I have been informed after numerous presentations about open standards / > open source and the current central government thinking on IT strategy, > that the strategy in Torbay Council will be to continue to provide > Microsoft / Microsoft based solutions for everything "Possible". > > To quote: > > "If I had my way, everything would be Microsoft". > > It would seem that the long term strategy is "business as usual" despite > government policy favouring Open Source "Where ever possible", which > unfortunately my director of IT interprets as "Not at all possible". > > While I will not give up fighting, I have decided that I want to change > tactics and address the business community in Torbay through the Torbay > Development Agency (TDA). I know that some (in high places) will see > this as a conflict of interests, so I intend to present my presentation > materials to them prior to doing the presentation. Clearly this means > that I can not be critical either directly or indirectly of council > policy, but since this is NOT my intention there should be no issues. > Ultimately if they disapprove of my presentation, I will have to make > the decision to go ahead "and be damned" or search for a "proxy" to > deliver the presentation.... > > > I figure that may sets of eyes are better than one so I am seeking the > communities help in finding research papers to back up my presentation. > The presentation will be on the lines of how to stimulate economic > growth through the adoption and use of Open Source in the Torbay > Business Community. > > This equally applies in other areas of Devon and Cornwall (and beyond) > but this is the focus of my presentation and all will be welcome to > copy, amend and reuse the resulting resources. > > Some Themes are: > > Open Standards - importance of and leverage for buisness. > Open Source awareness - strengths and weaknesses. > Examples of open source adoptions in Community / Business. > Adoption strategies - analysis of strengths and weaknesses. > Encourage local training programmes to support skill levels needed to > support open source adoption in business. > > I am generating a kdissert mind map at the moment which will hopefully > feed into a presentation to the TDA. Ultimately I would like to be able > to provide an open resource set that could be used to duplicate > presentations tailored for other business interest groups. > > What I am really stuck with is finding articles (preferably with > referenced statistics) that show how adoption of Open Source in > economically deprived areas has stimulated the economy. This is probably > because the real savings / costs are difficult to quantify to any degree > of accuracy that researchers are confident to publish. > > However, if anyone comes across a specific reference to this (with > stats) could they please post to me or the group email address, I would > be most appreciative ..... > > Any other constructive suggestions would be welcomed. > > In the meantime I will be getting back to my quest.... ;-) > > Thanks > > Tom. That's a great effort Tom! Well done. I will see if see if there are any useful articles in the Plymouth university library for you. Best wishes Roly -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html