This is some­thing I have not read about much so:

Well, I teach Lin­ux cour­ses for sev­er­al com­pa­nies. In the last year or so, al­most ev­ery course has one or two or five stu­dents com­ing from the IT area of some gov­ern­ment of­fice or an­oth­er.

That in­cludes lo­cal and na­tion­al gov­ern­men­t, by the way.

Some of them are al­ready on de­ploy­ment stages on server­s, a few even on desk­top­s.

Here's what I know about this stuff:

• There's no mas­ter plan. Ev­ery lit­­tle place is do­ing its own thing, all in the same di­rec­­tion. That sucks a bit.

• They are go­ing to be in trou­ble. Lack of plan­n­ing means peo­­ple sud­­den­­ly find their desk­­top is now Lin­ux, for in­­s­tance :-). That's not go­ing to be too nice.

• They will do it any­way: The gov­­ernem­nt can't buy a dead rat at a sale, much less MS Of­­fice

• Be­ing a semi-­­known Lin­ux con­­sul­­tant around here is go­ing to be in­­ter­est­ing in 2004

• Some peo­­ple are ped­dling Lin­ux and are clue­­less. Oth­­ers are clued-in, but they are not the ones get­t­ing the boss's ears.

• If you are in gov. IT, you gonna have to learn Lin­ux quick.

• Xan­­dros is mak­ing a big push here: it seems some of the de­vel­op­­ment for it is lo­­cal (they are over­selling the lo­­cal share, though, but this is gov­­ern­­men­t, that was to be ex­pec­t­ed).

• Red Hat and SuSE are not sel­l­­ing them­­selves too well in that area

• Lots of stuff is hap­pen­ing, in the qui­et. For ex­am­­ple, it seems that sev­er­al pro­v­in­­cial Ed­u­­ca­­tion Min­istries are ship­ping all new com­put­ers to schools with Lin­ux in it. Of course they prob­a­bly get re­­for­­mat­t­ed in 48 hours.

• Most server­s, spe­­cial­­ly mail/we­b/­­file servers should be switched to Lin­ux be­­fore 2006 (this is most­­ly a guess)

• Ex­pect MS to of­fer a bus­load of free li­­cen­s­es to the gov­­ern­­ment soon (a guess, too, but want to bet?)