Our government is rightly going through every line in its budget at the moment to save money. New Zealand needs to spend less and save more to reduce its debt burden and get through this recession in a much better shape to take advantage of the recovery when it comes.
Private households are saving money wherever they can and so should the government.
That doesn't mean slashing and burning entitlements or benefits, or restricting investment in new infrastructure. We need this new investment to lift our productivity and boost our long term earnings capacity. We must keep these benefits to ensure the poorest are not hurt the most in a recession and to ensure consumer spending does not collapse. So, rightly, the government is cutting out unnecessary spending in its bureaucracies and ensuring every last dollar counts.
This is where communism can help. I think it's a wonderful idea.
Some think the age of communism is over and should be bid good riddance. But it's not, thanks to the open source software movement. Hundreds of thousands of software developers donate their time and expertise to build software that everyone can use for free. To be fair, most try to make money by consulting on the side to help people use and tweak the software once it's installed, but more often than not it can be used out of the box and continually developed for free.
That's why I think our government should look very seriously at dropping its addiction to Microsoft and moving its IT systems and platforms to open source software such as Ubuntu and Open Office. Currently the New Zealand government and its various satellites spend at least NZ$2 billion each year on Information Technology. It's not clear how much of this is spent buying new licenses to upgrade and run Microsoft software, but some estimate it could be as high as NZ$1 billion. That is spent on Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and various Microsoft server and other softwares.
It is a very hard addiction to break. But other governments have done it, even now in some developed economies. Governments in Venezuela and Peru went open source in 2004 and 2005 respectively. The Ministry of Defence in Singapore shifted in 2004 and the French Police moved earlier this year, saving themselves 50 million euros (NZ$114 million). The Dutch and Austrian education system have also moved to using open source software.
Why isn't our government considering doing something similar? It is about to sign another deal with Microsoft locking the government in to using Microsoft software for another 3 years. This deal is called "G2009". The New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) has called for an immediate halt to the G2009 process. "We rush to criticise banks for profit-taking, but here we are negotiating for marginal cost savings from one of the government's biggest IT suppliers while they take massive profits from the taxpayer," says NZOSS President Don Christie.
"To add insult to injury, these very large and largely unnecessary spending commitments are being made at a time when the economy is in free fall and New Zealanders are losing their jobs and homes," he says.
I agree and not just because of the amount of money involved.
I am an Open Source convert and a convert to 'cloud computing'. I am writing this blog post using Gmail on a Chromium browser, which are free, reliable and better than Microsoft's Outlook and Explorer. I publish my blog on WordPress, an open source blogging platform that is free and much better than anything else on the market. Ubuntu is now an easy to use operating system and Open Office works just as well as Office. Interest.co.nz is hosted on a web server using a Linux operating system, Apache web serving software, a MySQL database and the PHP scripting language, all of which are Open Source platforms.
Sorry to get all geeky with you, but being open source has changed the economics of our business utterly. It means we can publish cheaply and flexibly. If the government were to kick its addiction to Microsoft it would lower its costs permanently and in a sustainable way. It would also change the mindset of government. Using open source software often makes people think more openly and inclusively. Government could do with a bit of that openness and inclusiveness in its thinking. It may even start to make more decisions in a 'crowd sourced' way.
Finally, spending less on proprietary software would reduce our current account deficit and make us less vulnerable to the sort of financial crisis we've seen the last year.
Communism would make our capitalist economy healthier and stronger. It might even improve our democracy.
- Bernard Hickey
Our government should adopt communism to save money
Our government is rightly going through every line in its budget at the moment to save money. New Zealand needs to spend less and save more to reduce its debt burden and get through this recession in a much better shape to take advantage of the recovery when it comes.
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