British goverment pushes Linux - to save money

i expect there will be more than a few teething troubles (uk governments of any colour have a bad history of deploying new systems) and lots of retraining needed - but i suppose it's a good move.

m$ won't be happy! it's got to be billions lost if gov.uk do decide to go this way...

I'm a health professional. Ten years ago I attended a meeting heralding the start of centrally held computerized health records which would enable doctors and other professionals to access an individuals records if they were taken ill anywhere in the country.
This was of particular interest in my field (psychiatric) as mentally ill people often travel around and present at different hospitals. Often this means that their previous case histories, drugs they have responded to in the past etc are not known and the patient is starting all over again each time and having to go right through the medication list again instead of getting the right one straight away.
This had cost 25 million at the time and has continued to be funded ever since. So far it has not been implemented and several different software companies have gained and then lost the contract.
The last I heard it was still not ready for prime time.
As Mickey says, UK governments have gone for all sorts of IT schemes-medical records, criminal records, sex offender database, national biometric ID cards etc.
This has cost literally billions and we have not seen any result.
What we need is a few 'nix freaks to sort it out on the cheap. Bring it on I say. J:)

It will never happen, the migration and retraining costs would just prove too much, that coupled with the fact that everybody (even the government) know that all government IT projects end up as a disaster then the idea is a complete non-starter.

z3r010 said:

It will never happen, the migration and retraining costs would just prove too much, that coupled with the fact that everybody (even the government) know that all government IT projects end up as a disaster then the idea is a complete non-starter.

you're perfectly placed to know

z3r010 said:

It will never happen, the migration and retraining costs would just prove too much, that coupled with the fact that everybody (even the government) know that all government IT projects end up as a disaster then the idea is a complete non-starter.

I agree. As much as I like Linux it is a Windows world.