Linux in Government: Stanislaus County Does Linux with a Best Practices Slant

If you call the Stanislaus County administrative offices and ask for Richard Robinson,
be sure to specify that you want to speak with the director of strategic business
technology. If not, you most likely will get the county's CEO, who has the same name. When
you reach the technology director, you will meet a former Accenture
(Anderson Consulting) professional steeped in high-level consulting
methodologies. In two years, he's reduced costs in his department by
30-65%, depending on how you want to figure it, by using Linux and open-source
technologies. According to Robinson, he's only getting started.

"In 2002, about two percent of the county's computer servers were
Linux", Robinson recently told reporters from
the
Modesto Bee. "This year, about one-quarter of the servers
are Linux. That number is expected to increase to more than one-third by next year."
Robinson also said that "he expects the county will save money in the
long run by moving to Linux because it won't have to pay software licenses
every year, which nickel and dime you to death and can be very costly".

After reading this article, I made a call to Stanislaus County and found
Robinson. He gave me another number to a VoIP phone, and soon we starting talking about Linux and
saving taxpayers money. After a few minutes, I realized Stanislaus had
cornered a pro.
Welcome to a High-Tech County
A couple of years ago, meeting government officials interested
in Linux surprised me. Recently, the incidence of inquires has
become somewhat commonplace, especially with initiatives being
introduced in states such as Massachusetts, Virginia, Mississippi, Rhode
Island and Utah. People in government work want to know how they can
join the march to open-source.

Even with this flurry of new activity, I hadn't come across a
government organization with the sophistication of Stanislaus County--welcome
to a well-run, model county government. I personally wish government people in Dallas
County, Texas, would take a look at how Robinson and his colleagues do business.

If you make it to the
Stanislaus
County Web site and dig around, you'll find some interesting business technology.
This county
has a vision, mission and values. It sounds like an MBA program in action. But according to the
communities, these people walk the talk. According to the Web site,
the Board of Supervisors have fashioned some priorities, including:

• Ensuring a safe, healthy community.
• Facilitating economic development.
• Delivering excellent community
  services.
• Promoting efficient government
  operations.
• Achieving multi-jurisdictional
  cooperation.
• Providing model community leadership.

The board also created a vision of "a county that is respected for
its service in the community and is known as the best in America".
In line with its vision, the board established a mission that states,
"Stanislaus County serves the public interest by promoting
public health, safety, welfare and the local economy in an efficient
cost-effective manner." Finally, the board puts its values up for all to
see. "We:

• respect each other.
• partner with our customers.
• encourage ideas.
• focus on prevention.
• create leaders.
• take pride in our work.
• share our learning.

Imagine these values in action, and it's not surprising that this
organization has turned to a commodity hardware platform and deployed
Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Strategic Government in Action
Although Robinson and I discussed the strides made in his department, I also
found
this
information on the county's Web site. That's something rarely
seen in the US; it certainly does not happen where I reside.

The Strategic Business Technology (SBT) division provides information
technology services and support for all county departments and
divisions. These services include but are not limited to Help Desk,
desktop support, financial and payroll system support, shared countywide
information technology infrastructure support, email hosting services,
wide area network support, local area network support, internet services,
application integration/development, electronic document management
services (EDM), geographical information systems services (GIS), county
website support and technology/business support.

This past year SBT delivered the ability to provide real-time streaming
audio and video broadcast through the internet and the intranet, a new
Check Reconciliation application for the County Treasurer, a GIS polling
location site application for the Clerk Recorder, a GIS application,
with the addition of (20) new layers, for the Children and Families
First Commission, as well as a new county website. SBT has also provided
substantial "in-house" technology training for the county in the
areas of operation systems and architectures, telecommunications,
programming languages and end user applications.
Planning the Right Way
During our discussion, I asked Robinson for some specifics about how the
county decided to move to Linux. "The county made the case", he told
me. "They wanted a strategic plan for IT that specifically spelled
out change. They wanted to get away from the mainframe, lower costs and
maintain a proficient staff capable of working independent of vendors. In
other words, no vendor lock-in. That led us specifically to Linux and
open source. We decided to use open source Java tools deployed on Linux. Our primary back-end
is JBoss."

Additionally, Robinson decided to use a train-the-trainer approach to
fulfill the county's requirement for staff proficiency. He selected a
core team and went with them to get the training they needed. They then
came back and built a series of Linux courses for county employees.
Two of the courses include:

Linux/ICJIS
and Linux Fundamentals for Systems Administrators and Support
Staff

The Linux/ICJIS training segment will cover a set of Linux-related
topics related to Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications, and to
the ICJIS Sheriff (ICJIS.SD), District Attorney (ICJIS.DA), and Public
Defender (ICJIS.PD) applications in particular. Linux is an extremely
broad topic, but there are a number of ICJIS platform touchpoints with
Linux operating system facilities that require specific treatment. The
training segment will cover some or all of the following: - Network
Time Protocol (NTP) and cross-site time synchronization. - Network
architecture for deployment and ongoing ICJIS application development. -
Linux accounts and permissions. - SMB filesystem. - ICJIS application
deployment hardware configuration - JBoss application server deployment
overview. - Remote access for ongoing ICJIS development and maintenance. -
Oracle 9i deployment overview, including backup considerations. - External
interface requirements, including Web services interfaces. - Application
startup, re-start, and performance monitoring. Note: This is not ICJIS
application end-user or business administrator training, but an overview
of ICJIS topics specific to Linux deployment.

Linux Administration -- Intermediate

During the course of this training students will work in a
hands-on environment, delving deeper into the essentials of Linux
administration.. SBT laptops running RedHat 7.3 and 9 will be
provided. Copies of slides used in training will be provided. Lesson
I - Return to the command line Additional system commands, utilities
Advanced Package Management Shell scripting revisited Red Hat 7.3 >
9 differences Lesson II - System Administration System processes and
Job Control Mounting file systems File permissions, advanced topics User
roles SSH, scp, RSA authentication Lesson III - Advanced Networking Linux
as a Windows Server Samba Linux as a DHCP Server dhcpd Linux as
a DNS Server -- named Lesson IV - Advanced Security System Hardening
Firewalling Logging Prerequisites: Linux Administration Essentials
or equivalent Linux administration training or experience. Intended
Audience: Department system/network administrators and support staff.

As you might notice, Stanislaus isn't paying lip service to its Linux
and open-source initiative. The above material represents some serious
training for serious people.
What's Next
As Robinson and I discussed Stanislaus County's other accomplishments, such as the
server consolidation to Linux and the migration of major law enforcement
applications, he said his next initiatives involved finding
a Linux desktop and moving the eGovernment Web sites to Apache on
Linux. Currently, he's doing pilots for both projects.

Stanislaus County has taken an intelligent approach to achieving its
strategic IT plan. The county began in the back office and
systematically has moved on to areas with the highest return on investment.
I couldn't have done a better job myself, and I don't know anyone else who could have
either. Kudos!

Tom Adelstein lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Yvonne, and
works as a Linux and open-source software consultant locally and
nationally. He's the co-author of the book Exploring the JDS
Linux Desktop, published by O'Reilly and Associates. Tom has
written numerous articles on Linux technical and marketing issues as a guest
editor for a variety of publications. His latest venture has him working
as the webmaster of JDSHelp.org.