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Another suggestion form some is a calendar for events to show what is coming up and for people to RSVP. Just parking it here for Simtandile to work through later.
The site may already render OK for mobile, but we’ll have to see if there is plugin capability specifically for mobile to enhance the forums experience. It was a concern before we brought the discussion forums into the site as the other alternative was a dedicated forum such as MatterMost which is designed for mobile and desktop use.
But we’ll see what can be added still for WordPress to try achieve a similar experience. It will depend on what plugin is being used. But we do need mobikle support yes.
Thanks Deon, further to that we noted with dismay that any Dept wanting to move their Microsoft hosting into a cloud hosting environment eg. at SITA, loses the portability of their licensing for the Windows Server OS and System Centre licenses. These revert to a SPLA licensing (Service Provider Level Agreement) and the excellent government discounts are lost for these two license types. Other MS licenses are not effected as they are portable.
This has serious implications for say a server farm full of Windows Server OS hostings. One solution is to convert many of those VMs to using Linux instead as Linux can host MS SQL as well as many 3rd party applications like OpenText and other applications.
We are still busy quantifying the actual impact though.
OK now we have confusion, there was already a discussion running for this topic with lots of replies in it under All Forums on this site… There was only one discussion forum so the topic was started there already.
Solution: Moodle Online eLearning
Institutions:
* SITA – supported by our KZN office for SITA Varsity courses
* Western Cape Government Dept Education
* Western Cape Government Dept Economic Development and Tourism for external eSkills for citizens – supported by SITA launch expected in Nov 2019
* Request from Western Cape Provincial HealthOur website refers everywhere to “in South Africa” which is different from “in South African Government”. It’s the first key thing we must decide on: Are we focussing on government institutions or the whole country? If the whole country is changes government’s role slightly and means must also bring in public representatives, and make sure we are not treading on the toes of other SA wide FOSS groups.
Latest News or Blog can be configured to push to the Twitter account which will alert followers to website updates even if they are not registered on the website.
Yes it’s certainly a debate that must be had. FOSS was never officially stopped at SITA. It started with a formal tasking via DPSA following from Cabinet’s FOSS POlicy.
It appears national government’s focus drifted in late 2000’s and so did SITA’s resulting in Arno Webb (FOSS Programme Office) contract not being renewed and those resources then just moving elsewhere.
The split away from DPSA for SITA has added complexity as it now falls under another Ministry. There has been a strong focus on MIOS interoperability to try to ensure interoperability between whatever is used.
What has happened within SITA is much the same as within Departments and we are also similar in that we have some technical resources that are still very pro-FOSS and get on with their own projects, but it does not mean that is what the organisation is also preaching.
I’d actually suggest we split that off into a separate topic of discussion as to how to go about it? A topic about re-establishing FOSS itself as determined by the FOSS Policy for government and who needs to be the leading players.
This topic was going to look at what scope and purpose this forum should cover (Government related or broader South Africa), and from that determine who should be stakeholders, what types of stakeholders would there be, etc. More the constitution and purpose of our gathering as it decides who must participate and what needs to be achieved.
Institution: State IT Agency
Websites – Drupal
ECM – Alfresco Community Edition
Video Conferencing – Jitsi at https://jitsi.sita.co.za any dept can use
Servers/VMs – Red Hat Linux Enterprise in Cloud, but some CentOS and Ubuntu server VMs for other applications
Large File Transfer at http://admserv.gov.za/mdev/upload.html – file does not leave the country and is auto-deleted
Network Proxy – Squid
Remote VPN network access for Gov: strongSwan – we have automated the online request, password resets, group policy management by Dept VPN owners, and it allows access from Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, FreeBSD, iOS, etc clients.
Browser – Firefox
eLearning – Moodle
E-mail – Zimbra as SaaS for Free State Prov Gov (must be confirmed)We also must decide on the visibility of profile details eg. many officials will not want their e-mail address etc public so these could be hidden, but they can be messaged via this site.
I do feel though if we represent a specific interest eg. SITA, DPSA, National Treasury, LibreOffice, etc that this should be visible.
Will basic names and interest be visible publicly, or only to registered members on teh site.
Site Profiles to be expanded to include drop list categories such as:
* Gov Dept (official e-mail)
* Local Gov (official e-mail)
* State Entity (official e-mail)
* Private Advocate (private e-mail)
* FOSS Vendor (company mail)
* Other (private e-mail)So that we all know who we are speaking to, are able to communicate to all registered FOSS vendors or Gov employees etc for surveys. It will also help define roles for access to specific forum areas. We must remember we could also have citizens and others registering to comment or get information.
In principle access to information should be open to all without copyright, but certain parts of the discussion forums may be closed eg. for sensitive discussions around gov officials responding to lobbying or where discussion could eliminate some of our FOSS vendors from participating in a bid, etc.
From old site this was the purpose of the FPO (FOSS Programme Office at SITA?):
FPO was established in September 2007, after the Cabinet’s approval of the FOSS Strategy in March 2007. Its vision and mission is to ensure implementation of FOSS in government and that migration to FOSS takes place.
Vision and Mission
To achieve its vision and mission the FPO will address five key executables:
Coordinate all the FOSS work in government
Create FOSS skills
Ensure that government procurement is FOSS compliant
Ensure that Minimum Interoperability Standards and Minimum Information Security Standards are FOSS compliant
Partner all FOSS migrations of government departments starting with SITA’s own FOSS Migration.The FPO also aims to:
Escalate FOSS skills development
Roll out the Open Document Format throughout government
Increase the rate at which government entities migrate to FOSS, starting with government department, extending to other agencies.
Perform FOSS advocacy
