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Story: Criticism mounts over Birmingham's Linux project

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Open source debate brought to a close - for now

This hit Birmingham city council's attempt to move 134 library staff to a full set of open source software, including SuSE's Linux operating system, OpenOffice 2.0 and web-browser Firefox. The city's library management software, Galaxy, works only on Microsoft Windows. DS, the supplier, was prepared to produce a Linux version, but this would have taken too long and cost too much for the trial.

Les Timms, IT manager at the city's IT provider, Service Birmingham, says niche suppliers understandably focus on their area of expertise rather than on providing software for multiple operating systems. Staff have stayed with Microsoft Windows XP, although they have moved fairly smoothly to OpenOffice 2.0.

The city also had mixed results with public access computers: after trials in three libraries, it is making 130 all open source, although 66 used for education will use Windows and OpenOffice 2.0.

The trial found other problems with Linux, with public-access computers sometimes failing to recognise diskettes and memory sticks or incorrectly saying these were full. "There were quite a lot of problems getting it working," says Timms, although this was achieved.

"I would caution against snap decisions saying, 'let's go fully open source in this area'," Timms advises other local authorities. "You may not need as many people, as the technology is very reliable, but you do need a depth of expertise."

However, Service Birmingham has identified several staff with previously-unknown open source skills, developed in their spare time. "Quite unusually for a local government environment, when I talked to people about it, lots of people wanted to join the project," says Timms.

Cheshire county council also experienced mixed results in trying to extend the life of PCs dating from the late 1990s, by installing Linux and open source web-browsers through which users access central computer systems. Around a dozen staff are using the reconditioned machines - with new keyboards and screens to disguise their vintage - with only one such computer failing so far.

However, the council originally considered testing 400 old PCs from social services; it eventually tested around two dozen, and successfully converted around half of these.

One reason for the reduced numbers, says Bev Roberts, head of ICT strategy and policy, is that many social services staff are moving to mobile working: "The department was saying, 'we need to replace some of these old PCs with portables or notebooks'."

In some cases, there were compatibility problems between Linux and the new screens but, in others, the difficulties were lower-tech. "We found the plastic was really brittle," says Roberts. "The on-off switches were breaking, the plastic was shattering." She hopes that hardware made this decade will be more durable, which may allow Cheshire to keep PCs in service for longer than five years.

An opportunity to test this may arise because Cheshire, like many local authorities, was given one-off funding to equip libraries with public-access computers around four years ago. "They are getting old now, and there never has been the budget put aside to replace those," says Roberts - Birmingham's library trial may be applicable. Weblink

Detailed reports on the trials: www.opensourceacademy.org.uk/solutions/casestudies

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