[clug] AGIMO bad bad bad

[Conrad Canterford]

On Wed, 2011-01-19 at 18:52 +1100, Jim Croft wrote:
> I work in a government department.  And I say unto all involved: BOO! HISS!

Ditto. Or rather: DITTO!!

> Indeed it would be nice to know about the process and how it came to
> specifically exclude open source solutions and settle on a single
> proprietary non-archival format. But I think that will remain
> protected by commercial in confidence provisions, etc.

I suspect, despite the mountain of evidence to suggest that paranoia is
warranted, that actually what is to blame is that the decisions are made
by very senior people who don't actually understand the technical issues
and are far removed from the technical side of things. They see a whole
swag of technical argument that means nothing to them and some names.
One of the names is something they are familiar with, and comfortable
using; and the other is something they've never heard of and (as far as
they're concerned) no-one uses. So they stick with what they know. Its
like the old advertising adage (possibly urban myth) - "No-one was ever
fired for buying IBM". While that adage is possibly not true (and
definitely should not be true!), the fact remains that very senior
public servants are an ultra-conservative lot and it takes a lot more
then technical facts and figures to convince them that what they've been
using for the last 20 years needs changing.

Conrad.