Zaragoza's move to an open source desktop is making good progress. All of the municipal civil servants now use open source tools and in the course of 2010, around 700 of the city's 2 800 desktop PCs will have seen their proprietary operating system replaced by the Linux open source alternative.

Significant licence savings, technological independence and flexibility are three of the many advantages of switching to an open source desktop, says Eduardo Romero, who coordinates the team of seven IT workers handling the move. "A large organisation like ours will save significantly on licences, both in the medium- and long-term". Mr. Romero further explains that the city, which decided to move to open source in 2006, has so far used the savings to pay for the migration process itself.

The open source desktop is making the city administration's IT more flexible. "We are constantly improving and adapting our business processes to meet the needs of our users. On the old proprietary platform, it is difficult to offer new and alternative ways for users to authenticate themselves. However, using open source, this service can be used for instance to manage software configurations determined by the time, the network address, the user, the department and other parameters."

Mr. Romero finds that it is far easier to manage open source desktops. "Using a web server and a few other open source tools, we distribute and manage all applications and configurations on all desktops. We have central control over the desktops yet at the same time are able to give each user a personalised system."

The Zaragoza city council is spread out over about a hundred offices. "The biggest handicap for the move to an open source desktop are the widely different business processes in the organisation. We have departments specialising in for instance security, city planning, social services and accounting, each using their own specialised applications and processes." Mr. Romero indicates. This has made some of the city's departments locked-in to proprietary software, complicating the move to the open source desktop. This makes the move to OpenOffice complex according to him, because of changes to user interfaces, file formats, macros, and connections to other applications and data sources.

Romero goes on: "It is not possible to move all applications to the open source platform. For example tools for Computer Aided Design [CAD] and Optical Character Recognition [OCR], can't be replaced by open source alternatives. But proprietary and open source software can live together."

He adds that there is considerable resistance to the changes in desktop infrastructure. "We have to explain ourselves to users, technicians, public managers and almost every body else. We discovered that fear, uncertainty and doubt are very effective tools to hinder our progress. Fortunately, our politicians promote and support our IT policies to switch to free software. Obtaining and maintaining this political support is crucial to overcome difficulties in the migration process."

 Further Information:

• Original press release  - OSOR.EU