Today I’m at the Red Hat Government Users and Developers Conference in Washington, D.C. As one would expect, the Ronald Reagan Trade Building has completely failed to deliver a working wireless connection without severely cracking the folds of my wallet. And of course I can’t live without connectivity, so here I am, $20 lighter.
I did get to say hello and have a quick conversation with Michael Tiemann before his opening keynote. But aside from that, a lot of people here today are not talking about “Should we?” or “Why?”, but rather, “How, and how fast?” The change of administration in the White House (whoever wins), coupled with uncertainty about budget futures given the current national financial crisis, are leading a lot of people to look at the “gateway drug” of open source — how does my agency spend less and achieve more with our IT dollars? And of course, Red Hat is there to show the way. Now it’s all about federal agencies having the foresight and courage to take the path out of darkness.
I am actually encouraged to hear the Federal Government has adopted a fee-for-use structure for wireless connectivity. Stop your grousing! What do you want, higher taxes? :-p
Seriously, that would chap my arse as well, what with my current contributions and the threat of more.
Ridiculous. The cost of administering a contract with a fee-for-use (or pay-to-play as I like to call it) wireless service, especially given the general standards of efficiency found in government procurement, far outstrips the cost of running the service for free. Since this building is paid for by my tax dollars, when I attend an event here — which is also paid for by the hosting vendors, mind you! — I expect to be able to carry on my work, since I do in fact pay the taxes that support this building, among other things. I definitely do not like this publicly owned building serving as a means for some private entity to make money off of people who are already paying to be here.
We don’t raise taxes anymore.. we keep borrowing until we go bankrupt. If it works for business, it works for the US.
The big deal is that the normal agreement is the Federal Government pays the 3rd party provider to put in the service. The 3rd party charges the customer, and if the revenue goes above a certain level pays the Fed Government on a revenue sharing plan. In most cases, the Fed’s don’t make up for what they are paying.
I for one welcome our new open-source-community-friendly transparent-and-non-insane-government overlords.
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