Chris Bailey & Vladimir Ognyanov Petkov

This page will hold information about Chris Bailey and Vladimir Ognyanov Petkov relating to their sessions on the development of Legal Case Management Software, and Open Source Circuit Riders.

Profiles

Notes Relating to talks

Legal Case Management Software

Project homepage: http://www.lcm.ngo-bg.org/en

Open Source Circuit Riders

Vladmir part of team running 2 year OSI (Open society Institute) funded project for NGO's in Bulgaria. Working with 40 organisations + > 100 others have migrated to OSS. Team consists of 5 e riders/ technical consultants.

Project highlights / lessons learned:

project focussed on support -- it's relatively easy to install and train on software but ongoing support is very important
organisations applied to the project so they already had an interest in OSS
40 organisations were selected from those that applied, 3 days initial training was provided at the start this helped to cut down on support issues later
technical and needs assessments were carried out and OSS installed where appropriate. Mixed environment generally -- need at least a couple of machines running Windows (to run Windows based software already in use with no OS alternative e.g. proprietary databases)
NGO's more readily accepted the software as it had been "specially developed" for them (i.e. Linux version developed for NGO use).
Low spec machines with no Internet access --> easy migration. More advanced users had more problems
Slackware for low end users / organisations (because it doesn't require too many system resources / hard disk space); Debian Linux for more advanced / high end users
Project worked with existing linux community -- project made contributions to the community (e.g. translation / development of Gnome into Bulgarian); Linux community also now contribute back to the project (e.g. helping solve technical issues such as finding printer drivers that will work with linux version and / or printer in use) "OS E-rider projects need to be part of the local OS community".
Developed small Bulgarian Orientated tools
If there are problems (e.g. bugs in developed software) don't hide them
2 migration strategies:

Use of OSS on Windows e.g. Firefox (browser), GIMP (graphics / image editing), Open Office (productivity suite / MS Office replacement)

then

change and use the same software under Linux (on the desktop) when users are already familiar with using the software

Removing Windows Operating System completely and installing Linux was not as successful
Work of Bulgarian project needs to be documented and this is in hand
Bulgaria faces different problems than UK (and other Western countries) e.g. in Bulgaria only pretty ancient equipment available whereas UK vol sector has access to recent(ish) equipment (generally 5-6 years old or newer)
People issues can be a barrier to adopting OSS
OS training for women
Pilot project in UK will be important as will documenting them

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