SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
TechRights reports
Last month, we took note of Microsoft [licenses] in the midst of high-profile corruption and a former Romanian minister is finally going to prison over it. To quote one article about this (in English, not Romanian):
"Romania's high court of cassation and justice on Thursday jailed the former telecommunications minister, Gabriel Sandu, for two years for money laundering, abuse of office, and bribery involving the lease of Microsoft IT licenses for schools.
"The ex-mayor of the eastern town of Piatra Neamt, Gheorghe Stefan, and two other businessmen who acted as middlemen also got jail terms of up to three years.
"The four defendants have also to pay a total of almost 10 million euros in compensation. The Supreme Court's sentence is not final."
It is worth noting that, owing to such corruption, it is Microsoft--not GNU/Linux and Free software--that makes it into Romanian schools. Recent reports serve to indicate Microsoft corruption in other countries; this is still the subject of a US-led probe which maybe some more corruption can somehow scuttle.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @07:48AM
As someone intimately familiar with the topic let me explain the fallout that this event had on the education system in Romania:
Originally the Ministry of Education directly purchased Microsoft timed upgrade licenses for schools after it outfitted the schools with computers through the SEI program.
After the whole debacle, the Ministry of Education refused to pay the price for the upgrade licenses and had the schools uninstall all windows 7/ office 2010 upgrades, reverting to Vista/ Office 2007.
During this procedure the Ministry of Education contacted Canonical to help provide a custom Edubuntu version for Romanian schools. Seeing that Canonical was more interested in pushing their non-opensource computer management platforms, the talks ceased.
During the transition Edubuntu is mentioned as an alternative, and a few lucky schools got Chromebooks, however the Romanian education curriculum is still centered on Microsoft products due to incompetence (or malice) even though they were rewritten to be technologically neutral.
Right now there are more schools using open source OS-es and productivity apps than ever before, even though there is no official support from the Ministry of Education.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @08:28AM
How's Siveco fairing these days?
Still gobbling every govt tender? Has Irina Socol been jailed yet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @08:45AM
Siveco is still gobbling every govt tender (usually as a subcontractor), Irina Socol is in house arrest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @09:07AM
Thanks.
Business as usual, then. I'm still glad I left the country.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 29 2016, @02:43PM
I have no dog in this fight, apart from the general Linux vs. MS stuff. I simply want to comment how freaking awesome it is that we have Soylentils who are at the heart of this. It was something I always cherished about Slashdot, that people at the heart of epic tech projects were members and would comment.
We have people of all political and technical stripes on this site, but I would invite all of us to take a moment to bask in the technical, practical relevance of Soylent.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @08:19PM
Tech projects you say and how wrong you are.
Here's how the "business as usual" look like for a govt tender in Romania:
In any case, the "commissions" are sorted out in advance
If somehow the winner is not the "designated" one (which happens rarely) or if someone successfully contests the result (in court), it just happens the govt "find" some flaws in the "bidding process" and another round (with an adjusted request for tender) will be pushed some time in the future
The tragedy is when the result of such projects are really needed: the expense of maintaining the system (actually, make it work in the first place) will be subject to other projects, more money, more commissions.
Projects like SEI, eRomania, IT health system and heaps of others I don't know went ahead on this pattern.
Speaking of the pattern, you can see the same in projects initiated by local administration (municipalities, public utilities administrations, county libraries, etc) - it's only the budget and commissions that changes (central govt works in the order of 100M-Euro projects, local admin goes into 10K-1M-Euro range).
About 20% of the project budget goes one way or another into "commission", as a rough estimation. To squander the money for them, the winner will need to invent lots of fictive expenses, see the case of Irina Socol [romania-insider.com]. Her fall was probably due to a change in govt officials, the new ones having other industry favorites; the slate had to be cleaned before changing the "traditional suppliers".
Please note we aren't speaking of bribes, not because its a bad words, but because it doesn't describe the "economic" reality. See, a bribe is usually an one-off fixed payment and can't have that in this kind of unpredictable and ever-changing world .
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 29 2016, @09:58PM
I don't dispute the pattern you've described. It's universal. Corruption happens in every country in exactly the way you've described. In Romania, perhaps, it's more apparent because there are not so many layers of lard as here.
All I meant to do is say, how great is it that SN has members on the inside of this and can comment. That's the beauty, and for which you all ought to take a short, self-aware bow.
Romania is quite awesome for breaking with the global media narrative. Bravo, Romania!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 29 2016, @10:59PM
Well, seems plausible. Wikipedia entry on the scandal has a quite impressive list of people [wikipedia.org] involved - including 9 former ministers.
Mmmm... some googling over the scandal reveals we should congratulate... FBI [romania-insider.com]
Besides, the cynical in me says: if the layers of lard are less, maybe the simple fact of buying MS licenses should be punishable with jail.
Did you know anything to say Romania's education switched away from MS software?
Because I found something on the contrary [ubuntuforums.org]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2016, @09:24AM
Edubuntu maintainer Stéphane Graber has announced via one of the official mailing lists [ubuntu.com] that Edubuntu won't be getting a 16.04 LTS release.
Marius Nestor at Softpedia notes [softpedia.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday March 29 2016, @08:01PM
Why use Edubuntu instead of a normal Ubuntu, RedHat, Debian, Devuan or even som *BSD?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday March 29 2016, @08:42PM
Because the schools are strapped for cash and cannot pay a full IT admin to manage all the computers and the level of access to the network (no pr0n for kids, restricted activities on internet, special access for professors account, managing the learning content and the process of creation, etc).
See Edubuntu features [wikipedia.org] and you'll note Linux Terminal Server, Sabayon Profile Manager, Sabayon Profile Manager, Gnome Nanny.
Look on what these do and what are for, then extrapolate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday March 29 2016, @07:58PM
So what the Romanian school children are stuck with is a Department of Nepotism bribery? and being cheapskates on top of this meant not acting. That resulted in schools to go open source to get things done?
Almost like a farce. Perhaps good enough material to for a theater play ;)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 29 2016, @09:10PM
It seems it is exactly like that. [soylentnews.org]
Looking over what the hell Siveco and SEI is, I got this [xtec.cat] (PDF warning).
Suddenly the "implemented by a public-private partnership" on slide 2 gains new meanings. Ouch...
Another SEI reference [siveco.ro] - a project spanning 8 years (2001-2009) and:
* "more than 15,000 IT laboratories, with 192,000 desktops and laptops", I estimate this didn't come quite cheap (at $1200/wks - it's pre-2008 folks, means at least $23 mil only in hardware);
* "over 7 million people involved in project directly or indirectly" - means a setup cost at least 4-5 times the hardware.
I don't dare to guess the cost of licenses and/or the project management overhead, but I'd be amazed if the project didn't swallow at least 0.4-0.6 billion dollars over those 8 years.
Do you imagine for a moment that the main contractor for SEI would allow the schools to do as they please?
And jeopardize the prospects of future contracts?
I can bet those computers stay mainly unused rather than being re-purposed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday March 29 2016, @11:41PM
I estimate this didn't come quite cheap (at $1200/wks - it's pre-2008 folks, means at least $23 mil only in hardware); /../ "over 7 million people involved in project directly or indirectly" - means a setup cost at least 4-5 times the hardware. /../ I don't dare to guess the cost of licenses and/or the project management overhead, but I'd be amazed if the project didn't swallow at least 0.4-0.6 billion dollars over those 8 years.
What I noted were that the Ministry of Education refused the price for upgrade licenses and had the schools uninstall all Windows 7 / Office 2010 upgrades, then revert to Vista / Office 2007. And contacting Canonical to get a custom Edubuntu but then ditching that too.
The incentive is to negotiate big budget for the contract and deliver cheaply so that the difference can be pocketed. There are big costs. It's just that the cost would likely been higher if this had been done properly ie delivered at a quality level that is alright.
Do you imagine for a moment that the main contractor for SEI would allow the schools to do as they please?
And jeopardize the prospects of future contracts?
I can bet those computers stay mainly unused rather than being re-purposed.
How the Romanian education curriculum ended up centered on Microsoft products seems irrational for a poor nation. But then these contracts are usually designed to benefit the people making them and shafting the users. Then it makes sense.
It seems however according to an anonymous poster that the schools are using open source OS and productivity software more than ever before without official support from the Ministry of Education. So perhaps the contractor and the Ministry simple is being sidestepped by the people at these schools? So in the vacuum of a botched contract, the schools ditch both Microsoft and the Ministry meddling. How to buy hardware remains an open question. But perhaps it can be filed under "oops broken, must buy now" ?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 30 2016, @12:02AM
That's exactly how. After some googling, I found the best overview here [lse.ac.uk]. The sad effect of all this:
Ooops... those on the "starve the beast" track, beware! You may not be immune to lower level corruption; added to the one at the peak (sorry... err... lobby is the PC term) and you may reach a situation of pervasive corruption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 30 2016, @12:39AM
The spooky aspect of this is that the traits of the Romanian government has similarities in countries that are supposedly alright. It all just seems like a pretend game.