The decision was taken in 2007, said Christian Adorjan from Austria's Federal Computing Centre (BRZ), during a recent presentation at the OSSBIG-conference. At that time, there was an operating system update, since the proprietary software provider of the Ministry was phasing out the support for the previously used operating system. In this framework, the software features were reviewed and it was concluded that the users were not satisfied with the office tools employed at the time. The Lotus Word Pro was used as a word processing tool while in house-developed software was used as text editor.
The key features of OpenOffice Writer and those of proprietary word processing software were compared in a test run and it was shown that no significant differences existed in the word processing functionality. However, OpenOffice was perfectly integrated into the Java Rich Client Applications of the judiciary. Other key advantages gained subsequently were the vendor and platform independence, as well as the free OpenDocument format (ODF), and of course the cost savings made since purchasing a license is unnecessary.
The actual migration began in early 2008 with a voluntary testing. Finally, from September 2008 and with the assistance of 8 trainers, 2 400 employees of the judiciary switched to OpenOffice in a period of14 months. The training effort was limited to one day, while further support proved unnecessary. As a result, a lot of positive feedback was received.
Further information:
- Original news article - Austrian Federal Computing Centre (in German)
- Background information - ePractice eGovernment Factsheet of Austria
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Quelle/Source: epractice, 14.07.2011
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