I love Linux myself, and I have no doubt that they've saved money, but the following makes me a little concerned about how they are going about Service Management:
"Ude said it was impossible to be exact about the amount of complaints the help desk gets about LiMux, noting that most problems are a combination of several causes. The software is not always the problem, since often there are problems reaching a server, or Internet connections might be malfunctioning."
My concern here is that they aren't logging incidents via some sort of appropriate iTSM framework (MOF, ITILv3, etc.) Even the most basic Incident Management setups would allow them to perform basic analysis of the incident data to work out where there issues are coming from.
I'm afraid I just don't buy the argument that it's impossible to know for certain where the city's problems are coming from :(
I'm speculating a little here, but there might be legal restrictions keeping them from reaching that goal. The basic argument is that any tool that may be used to track work performance (such as a tool tracking user errors) may be abused to control the employees work and thus may need union approval. I've run into this issue multiple times when doing work for government or government-like institutions in germany, once in pretty much the same constellation: A tool for defect tracking in IT was shot down because the union was afraid that it might be used to single out low-performing employees by tracking their computer problems. (sounds silly, I agree, but we're talking germany and we do have our own standards of sillyness.)
"Ude said it was impossible to be exact about the amount of complaints the help desk gets about LiMux, noting that most problems are a combination of several causes. The software is not always the problem, since often there are problems reaching a server, or Internet connections might be malfunctioning."
My concern here is that they aren't logging incidents via some sort of appropriate iTSM framework (MOF, ITILv3, etc.) Even the most basic Incident Management setups would allow them to perform basic analysis of the incident data to work out where there issues are coming from.
I'm afraid I just don't buy the argument that it's impossible to know for certain where the city's problems are coming from :(