Reset the Internet

Mass surveillance is illegitimate and destroys the fundamental democratic tenet of government by consent. The Atlantic Magazine reports that "Reset the Net is spreading personal privacy measures through its Privacy Pack, which gives a breakdown of the services users can easily install on their devices to protect their communications. You can look for the type of operating system you’re running on a given device and then go through vetted options for tools you can start using right away."

Open Document Standards 2015-2018

By David Shaw
Drop me an email if you would like to discuss this further.
Updated re UK 2014/07/24
Updated graphic 2014/04/25

10M to read

Introduction

Update: After a long-running contest with Microsoft the UK government on July 22 announced that open document standards HTML, ODF and PDF/A are expected to be used across all government bodies. Microsoft Word finally supports ODF but this also opens the door to other products such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

***

Historically, information technology (IT) departments have favoured monolithic systems and vendor monocultures because this reduced support costs. However, they rarely considered the cost of lost productivity in office work within business units. The most notorious example is those organizations that blindly rolled out Windows Vista with its totally contra-intuitive and non-productive ribbon interface (3% market share).

Because of the timeline in the Microsoft Windows lifecycle model, 2015-2018 is a window of opportunity to consider alternate strategies for office documents like spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word-processing.

History has repeated itself with Windows 8 and a Metro touch-based tile interface that is ideal for smartphones but useless on the desktop. Market acceptance has been a bit better than for Vista but is languishing at 11%.

After the Vista debacle the market adopted Windows 7. Now the ordained path is a 2015 upgrade to Windows 9.

This is why "Thirteen years after it was released, Windows XP remains the world’s second most popular PC operating system," according to this excellent piece in The Register about the nature of the business problem.


An anecdote: A 22-year-old this week told me she just bought a new MacBook laptop. She said, "I always used Windows and that's what I wanted. But when I was in the store all they had was Windows 8 and I didn't like those tiles. So I bought a MacBook instead. It was more expensive and there are things I don't like, but it's better." [This from a person who does not have a lot of money to throw around.]

Another anecdote: Several influential Windows advocates in the technical press have recently moved to Linux and are recommending Android Chromebooks for some members of their family. [This one really surprised me.]

(Android, Apple iOS,  and ChromeOS are all Unix/Linux derivatives.)

Other recent technology developments have drastically changed business models and the market, and put more control within business lines (e.g., software as a service). Surveys show the need for more agility in corporate IT in areas like Big Data (65%), cloud-based services (50%), Bring Your Own Device (41%), and users demanding the consumerisation of IT services (24%).

Currently around the world there are five now six significant government initiatives to adopt open standards for office desktop systems and applications for spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word-processing. Probably theses are just the tip of an iceberg, with many more that haven't been publicized.

Two open standards, HTML for the web and PDF for printed documents, have been universally accepted but for obvious reasons there has been fierce commercial opposition to changes in standards for office documents.

There is even more resistance to changing desktop operating systems from proprietary to open standards. These two issues can be addressed separately or together, because open standards for documents can be deployed easily in a proprietary Windows operating-system environment.

Business Problem

The business problem is simple. For years business objectives have not been the driving force in an organization’s information technology (IT) roadmap for desktop and laptop computers. Instead the roadmap has been driven by vendor lock-in and the vendors’ commercial software lifecycle, especially for operating systems like Windows.

This software lifecycle, in turn, has determined the useful life of hardware in the organization because each operating-system upgrade cycle usually requires more powerful desktop or laptop hardware. And often it out-dates existing applications. See this instructive story about the National Health Service in the UK.

Often an operating-system upgrade also entails purchasing new application-software upgrades for Microsoft Office, i.e, spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word-processing.

For years this commercial cycle to change had some rationale behind it – it is easier, for example, for an IT department to support only a small number of vendors even if this doesn’t optimise the operations of the line of business. But they have rarely measured the savings in support against the lost productivity in office work.

More, this creates a technical path dependency, in which the present and future is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant. But, as mentioned above, recent technology developments have drastically changed business models and the market, and put more control within business lines (e.g., software as a service) and in conflict with IT's path.

Even more recently Microsoft appears to be serious about acknowledging that the world is no longer totally dominated by Windows and that it can benefit by embracing other operating-system platforms. It has separated Microsoft Office from its dependency on Windows. Office Web Apps, a free online browser version of Microsoft Office, has been released for the iOS iPad and, now, for Android Chromebooks. Microsoft is also experimenting with a free version of Windows, called Windows 8.1 With Bing.

This separation of Office from Windows opens the door for organizations to move to open standards for both desktop systems and office applications.

The End-of-Life Support Problem

Another factor has been the end-of-life support on April 08 2014 for the Windows XP operating system. Some organizations migrated to Windows 7 in preparation but 28% remain on XP and the larger ones are paying Microsoft $ millions for individual Extended Support plans. 

Windows 7 itself reaches end-of-life on January 13, 2015, so those organizations just finishing an upgrade cycle to Windows 7 will have yet another upgrade cycle to start planning less than a year from now. Microsoft expects businesses to plan an upgrade to Windows 8, which has an end-of-life of January 9, 2018. This is not going to happen because of its difficult touch-centric design and heavier hardware requirements: it is clear that organizations will skip this cycle and wait for Windows 9.

This creates a window of opportunity 2015-2018 to consider alternate strategies.

Windows 7 ran comfortably on most XP-grade hardware but the requirements for Windows 8/8.1 (and presumably its successor Windows 9) are steeper (see end of article), necessitating new hardware purchases in most cases if keeping employees productive is a goal.

But Windows 8 has been a disaster in the market (11% share) due to its unproductive and difficult touch-centric design and tile (instead of windows) interface.

And some people have already been caught out by Windows 8.1. Many people bought computers with Windows 8.0 running 64-bit applications but if the CPU supplied doesn't support the suddenly required CMPXCHG16B, then when they upgrade to Windows 8.1 they will only be able to run 32-bit applications.

Worse, Windows 8.1 is already toast. Windows 8.1 Update version is the new servicing/support baseline since Microsoft plans to drop patch support for early versions of this operating system. By dropping patch support for versions of Windows 8 prior to Windows 8.1 Update, Microsoft is probably ditching Service Packs and moving to a 30-day update cycle to compete with Android, Chrome OS, iOS, and OS X. This increasing consumerization of Windows increases the headaches of IT departments, which are not organized to test continuous updates.

It is obvious that we are now in an era of constant and accelerating change. Most operating systems and browsers will not stay the same for five or 10 years, and many will be upgraded once a year or perhaps even more frequently.

Camwood's CEO, Adrian Foxall, says in a statement: "The death knell of Windows XP probably marks the last great ‘monolithic’ migration event. The new norm will be constant, successive change, due to ever-closer OS releases, and rapidly changing IT strategies and delivery methods. IT departments must be quick to react to this brave new world.”

Extended support for Windows 7 will expire January 14, 2020. Assuming a two-year roll-out of a new environment, this leaves 2015-2018 as a planning horizon.

Thus, it is opportune to consider if other more flexible strategies should be considered for office documents and desktops/laptops.

Several Governments Leading the Way

Several governments are leading the way with new approaches using open-source software. The ones we have been tracking for several years, to discover cost of ownership, lessons learned and best practices, are:

• Australian Government
• European Parliament
• French Gendarmerie
• Munich, Germany
• UK Government

And more recently at the municipal level the London borough of Barking and Dagenham.

Software Landscape has had a Tectonic Shift

The software landscape has had a tectonic shift driven by mobile-first and cloud computing. Once dominant companies like Microsoft – and their monolithic software stacks – have been pushed aside by new computing models based on Android and iOS in mobile, and Linux and other open standards in the cloud; and new business models like free operating systems, free software, software subscriptions, and utility computing sold as a commodity.

Information technology (IT) departments have, of necessity, been wedded to monolithic stacks like Microsoft Windows for several reasons but, really, it was simply the path of least resistance and kept IT departments in their comfort zone. Where once you could not be faulted for buying IBM, in recent years Microsoft was the choice that avoided criticism.

In this old model it was received wisdom that organizations would upgrade their desktop/laptop computers for new Windows operating systems and office software on a schedule controlled by Microsoft. Typically, you couldn’t buy a new computer with a slightly older set of software. It would always have the latest version of Windows pre-installed. In a way, this was a Windows tax on every computer purchase.

This landscape has shifted because of the reasons mentioned above. In March 2014 according to Netmarketshare's data for desktop operating systems, the Windows ecosystem is fragmenting very badly and business is resisting migration, partly due to austerity but also due to critical applications that cannot be migrated.

	Oct 13	Nov 13	Dec 13	Jan 14	Feb 14	Mar 14
Windows XP	31.24	31.22	28.98	29.23	29.53	27.69
Windows Vista	3.63	3.57	3.61	3.3	3.1	2.99
Windows 7	46.42	46.64	47.52	47.49	47.31	48.77
Windows 8	7.53	6.66	6.89	6.63	6.38	6.41
Windows 8.1	1.72	2.64	3.6	3.95	4.1	4.89

Source: Netmarketshare

Microsoft stumbled badly with Windows Phone and Surface tablets, and then with Windows 8 and a touch-based tile interface that kills office productivity while introducing a whole new workplace injury for tablet shoulder and tendonitis. Usability studies decades ago showed the inutility of a touch screen on the desktop, and the attendant risk of injury, but these were trumped by Microsoft’s desire to be different.

As mentioned earlier, the adoption of HTML and PDF open standards for web and print documents has been non-controversial. However, any intent to move to open standards for office documents has met with intense political pressure to retain the status quo.

Nonetheless, several national, state and municipal governments have started or completed significant projects to convert office systems and documents from monolithic proprietary software and standards to open standards, primarily Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF).

ODF, also known as OpenDocument, was developed with the aim of providing an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications like spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Dating to 2002, the standard was developed by a technical committee in the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium. Version 1.1 is published as an ISO/IEC international standard, ISO/IEC 26300:2006/Amd 1:2012.

While ODF can be used easily in a Windows environment, some organizations have chosen to couple this with a move to open operating systems, as well.

Current ODF and Open-Source Projects

ODF and open-source projects of interest include:

• The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has been examining office file formats for several years, as part of what it terms its Common Operating Environment Policy, a document which contains a number of guidelines restricting how departments and agencies should allow users to access their desktops.
• Initially the AGIMO recommended ODF-OpenDocument but reversed its decision in favour of Microsoft’s OOXML standard, and then reversed again for ODF-OpenDocument.
• European Parliament's Free Software User Group (Epfsug) is conducting a Debian pilot, in close cooperation with the IT department of the European Parliament, DG ITEC.
• The pilot is using ODF-OpenDocument and testing full disk encryption with cryptographic software tools provided by GnuPG and the use of a secure email client Icedove (a version of Mozilla Thunderbird).
• The Gendarmerie — France's military police force — has a GendBuntu project with the French interior ministry's technology and IS services department to migrate from Microsoft to open source by the middle of 2014.
• The City of Munich, Germany, completed in December 2013 the LiMux project to migrate from NT and Office 97/2000 to a Linux-based OS, a custom-version of OpenOffice, as well as a variety of free software, such as the Mozilla Firefox browser, Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client and the Gimp photo editing software.

Munich came under intense pressure from Microsoft, including a visit by then-CEO Steve Ballmer, to adopt Microsoft’s OOXML standard.

• In a follow-on activity in February 2014 Munich chose to use the open-source Kolab Enterprise groupware software to manage mail, calendar, task, and contact lists.
• The UK Government has decided that Open Document Format, the OpenOffice-derived file format, is the best choice for all government documents. The Cabinet Office’s Standards Hub has stated (January 2014):
• “When dealing with citizens, information should be digital by default and therefore should be published online. Browser-based editing is the preferred option for collaborating on published government information. HTML (4.01 or higher e.g. HTML5) is therefore the default format for browser-based editable text. Other document formats specified in this proposal - ODF 1.1 (or higher e.g. ODF 1.2), plain text (TXT) or comma separated values (CSV) - should be provided in addition. ODF includes filename extensions such as .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.”

However, the UK government is being lobbied by Microsoft to modify its decision and adopt Microsoft’s OOXML standard.

• Barking and Dagenham, a London borough, is facing up to the end of Windows XP support by adopting Chrome OS and in particular Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

Windows 8 Hardware Requirements

Microsoft quotes only the minimum system requirements for Windows 8. Below are the requirements set out by leading industry experts for a system that will be responsive to a user who wants to be productive. Lesser requirements will cause frustration and lost productivity.

• 1 GHz or faster dual-core processor with CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW, and LAHF/SAHF
• 8-128 GB of RAM
• 20 GB hard drive partition for Windows 8
• Hard drive partition for user data
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 802.11n (or 802.11ac) wireless networking
• USB 3.0
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher
• Multitouch track pad or monitor

Microgrid electrical distribution provides resiliance

By David Shaw

Scientific American reports that a planned microgrid in Hoboken NJ, based on work Sandia has done for military bases, will be one of the largest and most complex in the USA and will serve as a possible model for other cities to counter black outs.

'Smart mobs' renegotiate the balance of power between state and society

 By David Shaw

You reap what you sow: If you ever wondered how the Ukraine riots, sowed by the USA to the tune of $5 billion, triggered a coup that was then followed by the Russian annexation of Crimea, which in turn was followed by the West ratcheting up a new cold war and the USA returning to a me-first space war, this article about how the USA recently tried to foment 'smart mobs' in Cuba is instructive.

The Washington Post reports that:

Documents show the U.S. government planned to build a subscriber base through “non-controversial content”: news messages on soccer, music, and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize “smart mobs” — mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice that might trigger a Cuban Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”

OK, this is nuts. Sarajevo, any one?

Crops for the Future

By David Shaw

Slate Magazine reports on the largest global survey of crop diversity and diets conducted to date. Released last month (March 2014), it "paints a bleak picture of global food supplies. Countries are 36 percent more reliant on the same staple crops than they were 50 years ago. Just 50 crop commodities provide more than 90 percent of calories, protein, and fat around the world....It’s not just that our food choices are dull. It’s a recipe for disaster."

Climate change, higher temperatures and drought are already threatening our commercial food monocultures.

Security Threats (Part 3 - Security Awareness)

By David Shaw

 

Over on YouTube I've posted a presentation introducing security threats and

understanding why you are a target, who is targeting you, and some basic security protection. 

This is part of a series on basic security-awareness training for users in an organization.

Information Security

By David Shaw

I've published a video tutorial on basic information security on YouTube.

All comments and feedback are appreciated.