piefed.zeromedia.vipEstonian state trialing IT system free from US tech giants
news.err.ee/1609927169/estonian-state-trialing-…
The Estonian state is to analyze how viable it would be to reduce dependence on U.S. tech giants such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon for its software.
This comes at a time when in any case many of the roughly 25,000 government, state and subordinate agencies’ employees’ workstations are being transferred to a new, centrally managed system, overseen by the State IT Center (RIT), including a wholesale transfer to the cloud.
RIT says there are no plans to totally abandon Microsoft — whose Microsoft365 cloud platform is being used by the Estonian state — and the other big-name providers, simply that alternatives are being trialed. Also, a pan-EU decision may necessitate the move away from the U.S. firms.
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The pilot project starts this fall, RIT director Ergo Tars said. “If, for example, it were to happen that Europe and the U.S., for some reason … if a decision were made in the European Union that American products are no longer trusted, then what situation would we be in,” Tars explained.
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RIT is responsible for managing sensitive government and government agency computer workstations, which in any case are transferring over to cloud-based solutions, at the moment mainly using Microsoft 365 components.
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At present, Tars said, there is no magic bullet solution, adding that does not mean development is not quietly under way. Possible real risks are related to Microsoft outages, for instance, although their likelihood is not particularly high, Tars said.
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“There are two aspects to this. One is the tech aspect — how to build the service. The other is user-friendliness. How, in our context, a public servant can cope with that workstation in a situation where there is not a single application they have become familiar with for 20 or 30 years, like Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and so on. That learning curve is one important point in this test,” Tars said.
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all ministries and their subordinate agencies are due to join the RIT system managed, with only the ministries with the highest degrees of confidentiality: The Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior and part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to remain outside, thanks to their higher security requirements.
Currently, state agency Statistics Estonia is in the process of joining the system, to be followed immediately by the Social Insurance Board (SKA), then the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture and its subordinate agencies, such as the Agriculture and Food Board (PTA), as well as the Ministry of Climate and its subordinate agency the Environmental Board (Keskkonnaamet).
At present, 53 institutions and around 8,500 workstations are using RIT’s services.
By the end of the year, Tars said, RIT could be managing 12,500 workstations, while over two years, 15,000 out of the government sector’s current 25,000 workstations could move to RIT.
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Don’t let good be the enemy of perfect here. Most systems wont be replaced in a year but even with tiny steps you can reach a milestone. It is extremely important to reduce dependence on other states for the own state to function, especially if it is led by a nazi orange.
I wonder if that open up job opportunities..
You first start with building a domestic cloud infrastructure. And mandating by law use of it for critical services.
Chew gum and walk at the same time.
Move to FOSS apps. Move away from proprietary SaaS to FOSS SaaS or even IaaS. Move to open standards (qcow vs vmdk, odt vs docx, etc). Move from proprietary OSs to FOSS ones.
The real limitation is, well budget to invest in administration and software development (which moves costs from OpEx to CapEx), and an “innovation budget” which the most amount of new things an orgs given domain experts can juggle at the same time.
That said if have the orgs move to SaaS Element, half self host, some stragglers bridge teams, outliers bridge XMPP, etc etc. It doesn’t matter it helps push the ball forward for all of the teams. If some move LibreOffice, some OnlyOffice, some just start forcing their Microsoft Office systems to save to OpenDocument formats, etc etc
All push the ball, every step liberates them a little more so they can more easily do more!
You can already deploy free/libre software to proprietary clouds, so that is not a blocker. What is missing is legislation preferring free/libre solutions to proprietary ones, and building up domestic workforce who can directly support them, rather than buying licenses for support of software downstream of open source projects from US vendors.
Cina does it, fat chance of EU being able to do a damn thing though. Particularly tiny, permanently subsidized demographically challenged countries like Estonia.
Right cloud migration to sovereignty to me is SaaS –> PaaS/FossApp –> IaaS/FOSSPaaS/FossApp –> HybridCloud(FOSS IaaS onPrem, shared FOSS PaaS in both) –> MultiCloud
Looks good to me. But without at least some borderline functional (e.g. Hetzner, StackIt) sovereign domestic cloud vendors you’ve still got all your eggs in one US-owned basket. Everybody knew that, but nobody cared until the rooster crowed.
BuelldozerI ran the back of the napkin math on this for my org (US local government). Not really possible unless you’re just doing office work. Microsoft is so deeply ingrained in govtech that you can’t even shrink your footprint. That’s not even counting the political and cultural buy-in before you start the lift.
I found open standards were easier to push. You can, as an org, force Office to save as OpenDocument formats. Converting records takes some investment too though, but that one REALLY can show why it matters some times too. There are US laws that require documents be in those formats actually, for gov that is.
That also opens up the fringes/early adoptors to use FOSS apps if they can.
I said it before, but I’ll say it again. Every bit of liberation makes the next part easier. Even if it’s small.
Very expensive but possible… in 20 to 50 years… If most of the EU cooperates… So… No.
It would cost an amount of money, but it wouldn’t really be a hugely expensive undertaking nor would it take longer than 5 years tops if done with any level of competency. There are 8 American cities that each individually have a higher population than the country of Estonia. The administrative overhead isn’t very big to begin with.
Nah. Most of the software is free, and there’s mature free open options for everything, now.
The expenses are in training and taking the time to talk through simpler processes, and political in making folks give up their favorite sacred cows.
Critical stuff should be moved pretty quick.
Sometimes a hard conversation has to happen about what is really “critical”, of course.
DiplomjodlerThis whole thing is really picking up steam. Love to see it.
NorskSud
Pilot project is a good start.
Hopefully they consult with the federal government of Schleswig-Holstein, and the Austriaan Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism on their experiences
Volt ran a really powerful campaign on that idea
Sadly, most elections have rather high electoral thresholds, so they are only really successful at the EU and communal level.
Estonia is a place that has the mindset and people to actually do this successfully.
This should be done at the EU-level to create a polished standard system for everyone. We have functional, clunky open-source software that could easily be fitted for any purpose with all the money Europe wastes propping up foreign monopolies sabotaging us.
I’ve been arguing this for a few years. Create a solid, open source ecosystem for all the things we use for-profit providers for currently. It’d be a massive gain for European governments, and governments/businesses globally to have open enterprise solutions that are maintained with significant budgets (less than what we’re all paying the US now)
Which country is it that requires all govt funded software development to be opensource?
That’s a great idea also.
I don’t remember, sorry.
But that is exactly how it should be. Why are we throwing our money collectively after institutions that provide zero benefit outside of the solution they deliver? I don’t imagine service providers will go away, there’s no reason for some municipality of 5000 in a remote region to have their own full IT team, but if everything is open source every improvement that happens in one place can benefit somewhere else.
I think this movement away from US tech is the silver lining to trumpism.
I hope US tech collapses in an AI bubble venture capital shaped hole.
Own servers for the cloud and backup servers on another Union government servers with encryption. That should be the both in the Union.
Meh. If Trump keels over tomorrow or wakes up on the right side of the bed for about a month, they’ll go “meh, not necessary, we’re good”.
It’s a small step forward, but a “we’re going full opensource. this is happening”, this would be big news.