[oclug] 13 Billions to spend

[Milan Budimirovic]

godinp wrote:

>Today's Citizen is stating that the Feds are going to spend a huge
>amount of cash to centralize the federal government IT department.
>
>I'm not sure if I read it correctly but it seems they want to
>standardize somehow and have all the systems talking together. 
>
>This is of interest to many since we can try to "motivate" members of
>Parliament to adopt open source (Linux) rather then a costly solution
>that is closed source (Windows).
>
>Paul Godin
>
>
>  
>
It's hard to tell just from the article, but I don't think that 
"standardizing" on a single vendor or platform is part of the plan. If 
there were such a plan it would be a major breach of the three trade 
agreements that dictate government procurement at present: NAFTA, the 
AGP and the AIT. These agreements all state that all bidders must be 
treated equally. In addition, Article 1007 of NAFTA and Article 
504(3)(b) of the AIT specifically prohibit the biasing of technical 
specifications. There is probably a similar provision the the AGP but I 
don't know it offhand. NAFTA is the best-worded of the bunch, as it 
states that solicitations (RFP's, ACAN's, etc.) must be specified in 
terms of open standards rather than vendor names wherever possible. The 
AIT is less specific but there is a precedent in the PLCom vs. The 
Library of Parliament case.

:=)