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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: 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.