Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers. Katowice has been the capital of Silesian Voivodeship since its formation in 1999. It is the main city of the Upper Silesian Industry Area and the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union. Its population is 317,220 (2006), within a greater urban area populated by about 3.5 million people.

The answers are given by Jerzy Borys, head manager of IT Services Department of the Council

How did you find out about a possibility of a FLOSS adoption in your local government? Are you a computer geek, a volunteer who has decided to change something or was it just because your local government had been searching for savings in expenses and thus OpenOffice have been chosen? Or maybe both? What were other reasons of taking such a step?

Jerzy Borys, head
manager of IT Services
Department of the
Katowice Council

Jerzy Borys:

As far as the usage of office software is concerned, a local government is just like a commercial company (in case of Katowice it is quite a big company). I was informed Open Office software from some news sites, mostly thanks to the Internet and PTI chatroom. I found initiation of OpenOffice possible in Katowice’s Town Hall mainly just after I heard that Germany — Bavaria to be more precise — had already adopted free software. The adoption in Bavaria was described by Microsoft in a way that free software brings very high expenses of migration and training courses. On the other hand the Government of Bavaria admitted that this implementation significantly reduced the expenses of performing administrative duties and helped to escape from the actual Microsoft’s monopoly. And then we begun to count and analyze. The outcome of the analysis was: replacing Windows by Linux - inter alia because we already had adopted tools which configure network and work stations (HP OV, MS SMS/MOM) - is not recommended. On the other hand, gradual replacement of MS Office boxes would be desired and we looked toward OpenOffice.org.

So, it seems that the only reason OpenOffice.org has been chosen are savings, correct?. Does City Hall use free compilation of software written by the community (OpenOffice.org) or has it bought a commercial (but still cheaper than MS Office) Open Office editions like OpenOffice.ux.pl or StarOffice?

Jerzy Borys:

City Hall use both free OpenOffice.org edition, which is installed on all work stations bought since 2006, and OpenOffice.ux.pl, which has been dedicated to computers bought as part of the to SEKAP (System of Public Administration’s Electronic Communication) project, in which 54 units of local government from Silesia province participate.

Was the recommendation of European Commission and current trends in European Union in software selection ever considered while migrating? Was the OpenDocument as ISO/IEC26300 standardization by ISO significant to you?

Jerzy Borys:

All these factors were also significant - especially while the convincing the decision-makers.

How many PCs are used by City Hall? I read that there are 327 office PCs equipped only in alternative OpenOffice. Is that the majority or minority? On how many PCs both suites have been installed?

Jerzy Borys:

There are roughly about 850 workstations in City Hall of Katowice, of which OpenOffice alone is installed on about 350. On the other 500 PCs both suites — OpenOffice and MS Office are installed simultaneously. There are some old older ones (bought before 2006), on which MS Office’s licences are installed as OEM and until they are replaced by new ones, OpenOffice will be not installed on them.

How did the migration look like? What turned out to be the most trouble, and what was the easiest?

Jerzy Borys:

During the migration the most troublesome (and practically only this) was agreement upon documents’ format. Because in City Hall MS Office is used as well as OpenOffice, it has been mapped out that all files shall be stored in MS Office formats by order. It was then necessary to switch the saving formats to xls, ppt and doc accordingly. Another problem occurred with necessity of adjustment software which we used, to be capable cooperating with OO documents, but it was successfully done within service agreements.

Why did you decide to save City Hall data using Microsoft Office binary formats? Are you not afraid to lose your formatting or having your data inaccessible in future? Maybe adding e.g. Sun ODF Plugin to MS Office could be a better solution?

Jerzy Borys:

We didn’t come over this solution - it shall be considered I think. Indeed, the threat of loosing the formatting is real, and therefore we do advise each time to open documents after saving it in MS format, to check if everything is O.K.

What about employees, how did they react? Did you need professional trainings or a little help among co-workers was sufficient in changing habits?

Jerzy Borys:

It has appeared that a user’s attitude is the main problem in migration from Microsoft’s software. As far as Word and Excel are well-known, OO is not very much so. Hence there have been two barriers to jump over. First, the decision-makers must be convinced, that community written software may be, and indeed is as good as one created by one particular corporation, and then is time to show to the users users , that all their work which had been done within MS Office, may be done as well with OpenOffice. Second step is, to have professional training carried out too - because screens, option names in the menus, layout of particular options in menus, function names, etc. in OpenOffice are different than these of MS Office.

Did you have difficulties with compatibility of documents received in MS Office formats?

Jerzy Borys:

Of course we did have compatibility problems, and we still do. This is the main reason why OpenOffice (for now, at least) will not be the only office software used in our City Hall. Most problems are caused by tables saved in Word and Excel, which are not OpenOffice compatible, document encryption in Word and Excel which is not OpenOffice compatible either, and the MS Access databases, that are not at all compatible with OpenOffice. Equations made in MS Office cannot be edited in OpenOffice - they are displayed as a pictures.

What format are you using to save your internal City Hall data, and how are they sent to other institutions?

Jerzy Borys:

As I have mentioned answering a previous question, MS Office formats are the base, but for document circulation, as well as for Public Information Bulletin, we gradually increase the usage of odt and ods formats. The PIB of City Hall documents are saved in rtf and pdf formats.

Have you ever noticed OpenOffice lacking some options needed for running City Hall? Do you submit requests to OpenOffice’s Issuezilla in such cases? Or do the IT people in your office write patches and then send them to the project?

Jerzy Borys:

There are problems of course, but we don’t ever submit them anywhere. In such cases we continue to use MS Office.

Are you using the latest software always? How often do you update?

Jerzy Borys:

Regarding OpenOffice we are trying to always use stable versions, with polish language support, ready compiled. Because the versions that could be automatically installed while logging in are not available, and because we do not allow the users to run Internet updates, these are only installed occasionally, or in case we need to enable some already researched functionality, or during routine maintenance by IT people.

Do you see the OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is expected to be released by the end of this month, as the great opportunity to update software upon all of your 500 PCs?

Jerzy Borys:

As I have wrote before - we do not install the latest software ever, but rather the stable one, which proved its reliability. Therefore we would like to wait before we introduce the 3.0. version. First and foremost we will install it on IT people computers, checking functionalities and functions to determine the new additions, and the training course necessity, only then will we update anything.

Was it been possible to achieve something by using OpenOffice, which has not been achieved before (e.g. some database, serial correspondence, non-standard office solution or maybe invoices and bills?

Jerzy Borys:

No, there was no such case.

Do your office PCs run also other Open Source software than OpenOffice?

Jerzy Borys:

Currently, as one of the base database systems, that store the Ratusz system data from Rekord, we use the FireBird engine (formerly InterBase), hosted on a Linux server, the SEKAP project communication server uses another Linux machine, and the mail server resides on an FreeBSD machine. The City Hall of Katowice’s current website as well as Public Information’s Bulletin have used Mambo Open Source, however CMS of this system is nowadays too narrow for us and the Office’s new website is created using commercial solutions.

What did you mean by “commercial solutions” : “commercial and closed” or “commercial and opened”? If the former, the new CMS will not made available for wide society, or simply the other local government institutions?

Jerzy Borys:

It will be a commercial solution - made by Katowice based 2BCG and Art4Net companies. It shall be “open” if the functionality (opened for new possibilities) is the thing you need most but it shall be “closed” from the FLOSS point of view.

Don’t you think that a CMS that is financed from the citizen’s taxes and used in state agencies should be developed as open source software — pro publico bono? If using Open Source gave you savings, why are you switching to non-free software now? Why didn’t you order free extensions to Mambo or rewriting of the old modules? The cost of such project should not be higher than writing a new system from scratch, and it would allow to create a universal CMS adjusted to the needs of the counties. It could be even a common project of Katowice council and the nearby councils of Gliwice, Zabrze, etc. What is going to happen now if the company that owns the rights to the new non-free system ceases to exist?

Jerzy Borys:

Choosing this platform was the result of the public offering in which we could not (without breaking the law) specify that we are only interested in open source solutions. We usually give the OSS products additional points when choosing a solution but we didn’t want to do it in case of a CMS product because we knew that none of the companies interested in taking part in the project had an open-source based solution. We could not take risks here. And creating a new universal CMS would be a challanging and time-consuming task. The Katowice portal was very obsolete and we wanted to act fast to replace it with a modern solution so that it works well as a showcase of the city.
What happens if the company goes bust? Well as long as the delivered tools work for us, we’ll continue using them. If it turns out thet some important features are missing we’ll have to change the engine of the website yet again.

Thanks for your time.

Interview has been done by Mateusz ‘quest’ Zasuwik
Proof-read by: michuk, el es