I remember writing about this one.
Good luck getting rid of MS dependency in the public sector. Migrating away all of the legacy systems is nigh impossible. Then you'd have to retrain all staff.
While this is not justified from an economic perspective one can only hope that these institutions have higher values to adhere to.
EDIT: This is great news, I should be more optimistic about this effort.
It doesn't appear to be impossible; two days ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732485
> Good luck getting rid of MS dependency in the public sector
Thanks! Marathons aren't won by speed or doing everything at once, but progressing towards a far away goal step by step, and surely we'll need all the "good lucks" we can receive.
I'll disagree it's nigh impossible, and find such defeatist perspectives well, defeatists. One shall have hope we can continuously improve things by taking care of what decisions we make, this hopefully is one of those steps.
I agree that my perspective could use more optimism, after all, the sibling comment highlighted a couple success cases.
You are right. We need to make an effort, start small and tackle this issue step by step. I do support this effort and I think these are great news.
I stand by the comment of this being dependent on a commitment to higher values than "cheapest ok solution" which is all too common in the private sector.