Yes, we lost, but we deserve respect!
If three hundred people from different faculties and backgrounds join in criticizing a political decision concerning the computational infrastructure of the university in which and for which they work, a decision done behind the scenes and with no serious argumentation behind, these people deserve not to be treated as idiots, ignorants or troublemakers.
If after one year with delays and unclarities the migration is eventually done, and we – those people – ask for a public report about the process, the results, and the time and money spent, as we did in June – see below for the actual questions in the mail sent... we are met with total silence.
Now that they won – by doing something they did because they simply had the power, but were not able to convince any of us that it was right or even well researched -- we are not even met with an answer.
Is this how UiO wants to appear to its employees and the whole country? Leaders who know better, and have no respect for divergent opinion? No transparency; the use of catch phrases a la Kim il sung "this is for your own good", and quickly! go to the next prepotency, so that the
reasons for indignation for each university employee become so many that one is not even able to keep up with the fights one started with?
I decided to write this in English, because if UiO wants to be an international university, it cannot rely on an apparently Norwegian-ingrained fear of dissent to avoid uproar. It has to accept and meet valid criticism from non-Nordic employees as well.
I deem it an absolute requirement that, when one has initiated a grassroots movement against a leadership decision, and this decision is nevertheless implemented, that one is provided a honest report on whether their initial claims were proved to be valid or not. All UiO-citizens have the right to know the data and the facts, instead of reading simple PR pieces saying "Don't worry, everything is going to be right".
Worse than lack of freedom of speech (although in practice there are hardly any channels that one can use to discuss matters concerning the whole university) is the total lack of respect for people like us, who believe that a particular decision is so bad that we are devoting our own personal time to fight against it, to improve our workplace and the institution we represent –against the UiO civil servants ("information consultants") who are hired and paid to answer and contradict us.
We therefore require an open answer to the following questions ((sent 23 June 2014 to post-uioledelsen@admin.uio.no, no answer received yet), and that UiO leadership takes responsibility for the facts and data that they will uncover:
Questions about the migration to MS Exchange mail servers
One year has passed since we, representing around 300 signatories, presented our position in opposition to the introduction of Microsoft Exchange as the e-mail and groupware solution at UiO. Now we, representing a similar number of people (see
http://folk.uio.no/dssantos/nooutlookatuio/newsignatures.html), would like to receive answers to the following questions:
1) how much money was used, and how many person-hours were committed to the deployment and migration process?
2) how much money is planned to be used until everything is ready (for example education is still being offered)?
3) what contracts and/or binding promises were made to Microsoft, and how much development/adaptation of MS products has been done by UiO personnel or separately contracted to third parties? More specifically, where is the contract with MS published/made public?
4) what remains of the promise that "not everyone is forced to use Outlook"? As far as we can see, all administrative employees must use it, and people accessing mail on the web are strongly advised to use the "Outlook Web Access (OWA)" client. Meanwhile, some people have been pressured into using Outlook despite claims of support for other
programs.
5) can USIT report that the support for other clients is on-going and working?
6) what has been done to guarantee e-mail privacy, especially after the Snowden disclosures revealed that Microsoft and other companies have implemented backdoors in their e-mail products?
7) do you have an estimate of the hours wasted by the academic scientific employees to adapt to the new solution, the support hours used by the IT personnel to give support to the users, the number of e-mails lost and the time used in courses to learn the new system?
8) do you have any intention to evaluate the result thoroughly, by interviews, questionnaires, user panels involving a genuinely representative sample of users, or any other means?
9) can you provide us with an estimate on how much it would cost to revert to a Free Software solution, which as of the beginning of June still supported the overwhelming majority of e-mail users? (see http://www.uio.no/for-ansatte/enhetssider/arrangement/it-konferansen/2014/program/sesjoner/5/nike.html) and with an estimate on how much it costs (licenses, support, etc.) to go on with the Exchange solution?
We believe that the university staff who are concerned with this huge change in infrastructure, have a right to be informed on these matters. Thank you in advance for considering our request.
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