Comment on A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions

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barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

But there’s one agency/department/guy (I seriously don’t know) who has to confirm that the data of our staging system reached their system and was processed correctly.

There’s no “their system”: The boxes under the desks of civil servants are managed by dataport, talking to backend infrastructure managed by dataport.

If there’s some new administrative procedure agencies or ministries want their civil servants to do and it can’t be implemented because it’s under-specced or just incoherent then dataport gets to send that spec back saying “fix your shit”, if it’s implemented as specced and people complain then dataport can say “well it’s your budget, not ours”. If they do that all the time at some point the court of accounts will take them aside for a polite conversation. Just thing one thing, making IT external to whatever it is that the agency is doing, provides accountability.

That is: The solution isn’t so much to eradicate bullshit but to make sure that it stays where it’s generated.

but if all their clients are overworked, understaffed or straight up incompetent

I’ll just leave this here.

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