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Correct title would be "Austrian ministry replaces Microsoft with Atos". I wish Austria had domestic national IT development teams for national products/websit

Correct title would be "Austrian ministry replaces Microsoft with Atos". I wish Austria had domestic national IT development teams for national products/websites, like the high quality ones Denmark or UK have, instead of just outsourcing everything government IT related to politically connected publicly traded consultancies like Atos, Kapsch or T-Systems, which just screams of corruption and cronyism, things Austrian politicians are well versed in. This would a much better use for taxpayer money and valuable skill build-up of the nation's tech sector(that's severely lacking in Austria) if the government did its own IT development. Plus, a lot more locals, especially with high moral values who care more about the state of their nation than just making a quick and easy buck, would find working for their government IT services more rewarding and giving a sense of ownership in their nations, versus working for those shady consultancies who are incentivized to milk the taxpayer dry and enrich the shareholders without caring about the quality of what they deliver because of their iron clad government contracts with little accountability which they got from buttering, wining and dining the right people in power, who then get hired as "consultants"(lobbyists) in those consultancies when their political careers are over to perpetuate this revolving door to the gravy train.

delusional 1y ago
> high quality ones Denmark That's fun to hear somebody say on the internet. The consensus amongst my peers here in Denmark seems to be that we also outsource most of our public software to Accenture, NetCompany, and KMD. Two of these are admittedly Danish consultancy companies, but they are private consultancies.
zipy124 1y ago
Whilst the UK has GDS most of our stuff is outsourced to consulting firms just like there, for example PA consulting and Accenture for home office stuff etc...
samus 1y ago
Why would you think the Austrian government is not doing its own IT development? There already is a company specifically for that: the Bundesrechenzentrum.
embedding-shape 1y ago
> Correct title would be Austrian ministry replaces Microsoft with Atos. From the article: > The implementation was carried out in partnership with Atos Austria, which worked alongside Nextcloud's team to ensure the platform met the ministry's legal, technical, and organizational requirements. So yes, while Atos seems to have been the contractor (?), the end result is that the title is correct, they've replaced whatever they used Microsoft for, with NextCloud, the process which was executed by Atos. That's how I understood it from the article at least. And I'm guessing more people are likely to have heard about NextCloud before while probably not heard about Atos before, unless you're Austrian. So for a web article, it makes sense to highlight what people might understand and recognize.
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
  Microsoft isn't a product or service. Nextcloud is. They either replaced Microsoft with Atos, or they replaced Office365 with Nextcloud.
  - jimjimjim 1y ago
    why not both?
    - Brian_K_White 1y ago
      Irrelevant to the point.
- jack_tripper 1y ago
  >And I'm guessing more people are likely to have heard about NextCloud before while probably not heard about Atos before, unless you're Austrian You don't need to be Austrian for that. Atos is a pretty infamous IT services provider that operates in all of Europe and has the same issues as all such service providers like Accenture, Cognizant, Capgemini, Wipro, IBM, NTT Data, etc, and so far I haven't see ONE SINGLE CASE where these clowns were involved in a government project and it didn't turn out to be an expensive, over-budget, delayed, shitshow leaving the taxpayers holding the bag. Like for example Austria has a national highway company(ASFINAG) and national railway company(OEBB) where the government is majority shareholder and they work pretty damn good to serve the taxpayers and the users of those services whether they're Austrians or not. So then why not have the same for IT infrastructure instead of outsourcing it to all these parasites? It's 2025, when do we start treating IT infrastructure like road, rail, water, energy, healthcare etc already? How many decades more need to pass till the government realizes that the internet and associated services are also worthy of national importance and therefore ownership? I'm not saying to nationalize the internet, on the contrary privatization and decentralization is better for consumers, but the digital interaction between taxpayer and government is something that should not be outsourced to the private sector, especially not to foreign publicly treaded companies like Atos, who have no skin in the local game and don't give a fuck if they leave an expensive mess behind as long as they can ride the gravy train while it lasts. So excuse me if I have a high degree of skepticism when I hear about the involvement of the likes of Atos in taxpayer funded projects.
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
I’m 100% confident and Microsoft installation would also have required working with a local reseller/contractor. It would probably have been ATOS itself.
woodson 1y ago
> I wish Austria had domestic national IT development teams for national products/websites It (kinda) does: the Bundesrechenzentrum (BRZ, https://www.brz.gv.at/en/ https://www.brz.gv.at/en/). They do a lot of public facing government websites and portals. If you lived in Austria, there’s a good chance that you’ve used at least one of them.
- rcbdev 1y ago
  ...and the BRZ doesn't outsource most stuff? Just like the Magistrate's Dept. 1 (Vienna Digital) for state-level IT in the federal capitol? Or IT-Kommunal for municipal IT all over Austria? As far as I'm concerned, all of these public sector ICT divisions are just a pile of contracts.
  - woodson 1y ago
    Yes of course. From the outside, I can’t tell to what extent and whether it’s being done sensibly, but there are projects where they are likely better off contracting them out, and others where there are benefits of keeping things in-house (e.g., involving subject matter experts with long involvement in some niche government area). My point was that such an organization already exists.
    - rcbdev 1y ago
      At the time of writing, the BRZ has spent over 2.1 billion euros in public procurement contracts above the award threshhold. [1] This is not accounting for personell costs of their 1800 in-house employees. [1] https://offenevergaben.at/auftraggeber/8983 https://offenevergaben.at/auftraggeber/8983
harvey9 1y ago
True the UK has some decent government websites, but those were against a wider trend of huge government spending on all the well-known big tech firms.
hex-m 1y ago
The dependency is much weaker in this case. Finding somebody else to manage/host Nextcloud is easy while using MS Office without Microsoft is impossible.
nasmorn 1y ago
Frank Stronach needs to lead a Hundertschaft unternehmerischer nachhaltiger Digitalisierung.

delusional 1y ago

> high quality ones Denmark That's fun to hear somebody say on the internet. The consensus amongst my peers here in Denmark seems to be that we also outsource most of our public software to Accenture, NetCompany, and KMD. Two of these are admittedly Danish consultancy companies, but they are private consultancies.

zipy124 1y ago

Whilst the UK has GDS most of our stuff is outsourced to consulting firms just like there, for example PA consulting and Accenture for home office stuff etc...

samus 1y ago

Why would you think the Austrian government is not doing its own IT development? There already is a company specifically for that: the Bundesrechenzentrum.

embedding-shape 1y ago

> Correct title would be Austrian ministry replaces Microsoft with Atos. From the article: > The implementation was carried out in partnership with Atos Austria, which worked alongside Nextcloud's team to ensure the platform met the ministry's legal, technical, and organizational requirements. So yes, while Atos seems to have been the contractor (?), the end result is that the title is correct, they've replaced whatever they used Microsoft for, with NextCloud, the process which was executed by Atos. That's how I understood it from the article at least. And I'm guessing more people are likely to have heard about NextCloud before while probably not heard about Atos before, unless you're Austrian. So for a web article, it makes sense to highlight what people might understand and recognize.

Brian_K_White 1y ago
Microsoft isn't a product or service. Nextcloud is. They either replaced Microsoft with Atos, or they replaced Office365 with Nextcloud.
- jimjimjim 1y ago
  why not both?
  - Brian_K_White 1y ago
    Irrelevant to the point.
jack_tripper 1y ago
>And I'm guessing more people are likely to have heard about NextCloud before while probably not heard about Atos before, unless you're Austrian You don't need to be Austrian for that. Atos is a pretty infamous IT services provider that operates in all of Europe and has the same issues as all such service providers like Accenture, Cognizant, Capgemini, Wipro, IBM, NTT Data, etc, and so far I haven't see ONE SINGLE CASE where these clowns were involved in a government project and it didn't turn out to be an expensive, over-budget, delayed, shitshow leaving the taxpayers holding the bag. Like for example Austria has a national highway company(ASFINAG) and national railway company(OEBB) where the government is majority shareholder and they work pretty damn good to serve the taxpayers and the users of those services whether they're Austrians or not. So then why not have the same for IT infrastructure instead of outsourcing it to all these parasites? It's 2025, when do we start treating IT infrastructure like road, rail, water, energy, healthcare etc already? How many decades more need to pass till the government realizes that the internet and associated services are also worthy of national importance and therefore ownership? I'm not saying to nationalize the internet, on the contrary privatization and decentralization is better for consumers, but the digital interaction between taxpayer and government is something that should not be outsourced to the private sector, especially not to foreign publicly treaded companies like Atos, who have no skin in the local game and don't give a fuck if they leave an expensive mess behind as long as they can ride the gravy train while it lasts. So excuse me if I have a high degree of skepticism when I hear about the involvement of the likes of Atos in taxpayer funded projects.

hshdhdhj4444 1y ago

I’m 100% confident and Microsoft installation would also have required working with a local reseller/contractor. It would probably have been ATOS itself.

woodson 1y ago

> I wish Austria had domestic national IT development teams for national products/websites It (kinda) does: the Bundesrechenzentrum (BRZ, https://www.brz.gv.at/en/ https://www.brz.gv.at/en/). They do a lot of public facing government websites and portals. If you lived in Austria, there’s a good chance that you’ve used at least one of them.

rcbdev 1y ago
...and the BRZ doesn't outsource most stuff? Just like the Magistrate's Dept. 1 (Vienna Digital) for state-level IT in the federal capitol? Or IT-Kommunal for municipal IT all over Austria? As far as I'm concerned, all of these public sector ICT divisions are just a pile of contracts.
- woodson 1y ago
  Yes of course. From the outside, I can’t tell to what extent and whether it’s being done sensibly, but there are projects where they are likely better off contracting them out, and others where there are benefits of keeping things in-house (e.g., involving subject matter experts with long involvement in some niche government area). My point was that such an organization already exists.
  - rcbdev 1y ago
    At the time of writing, the BRZ has spent over 2.1 billion euros in public procurement contracts above the award threshhold. [1] This is not accounting for personell costs of their 1800 in-house employees. [1] https://offenevergaben.at/auftraggeber/8983 https://offenevergaben.at/auftraggeber/8983

harvey9 1y ago

True the UK has some decent government websites, but those were against a wider trend of huge government spending on all the well-known big tech firms.

hex-m 1y ago

The dependency is much weaker in this case. Finding somebody else to manage/host Nextcloud is easy while using MS Office without Microsoft is impossible.

nasmorn 1y ago

Frank Stronach needs to lead a Hundertschaft unternehmerischer nachhaltiger Digitalisierung.