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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

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:

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.

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!