City strokes modest firms, promises to spend a few million on IT

Bristol City Council has announced changes to its ICT strategy aimed at ensuring that within the next three years 25 per cent of its annual technology budget will be spent with local SMEs. The council is planning a "more flexible approach" towards the procurement of ICT goods and services on which it spends about £25m each …

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an idea

While they're spaffing a few million on ICT. Why not go through their offices and take a look at the clunky computers most of their staff are using.

I bet they'll find windows barely running on an inefficient PC making use of word and an email client and that's about it.

They could probably strip out the computers in most of their offices and swap them for something like an atom based PC using a tiny portion of the power. Pop linux on the machine and they're now down to saving another £100 on a windows license per computer, swap to openoffice and something to replace the email client they save even more.

If they don't want to do that, or they have some applications which need more grunt. Buy a server, the applications needing the grunt run on the server via a remote connection. It'd still cost less than giving everyone a windows PC, because it'd be a single license. Setup cost would probably be a bit of a bitch,, but afterwards they're saving year on year in both power costs and license costs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Here's an idea

That would make too much sense.

Most councils love any excuse to spend money so that's nothing is left in their budget.

Councils in Glasgow last year put up bollards on one street so tightly together you couldn't even walk through

(and no I'm not fat) them ,then the following week after so many complaints they ripped them out.

Plus most councils have to keep on getting backhanders so Windows licences will definitely be chosen.

[Tim 54]

Re: Here's an idea

Why not try some facts before commentating. Bristol City council actually tried to go open office several years ago, but had to give up because so many other areas of government ran on Microsoft "standards" they ended up having to install loads of odd copies of office anyway.