The Open Source Index is a collection of rankings based on research at Georgia Tech. Recently, Red Hat made the findings available via this cool online web application. It might be arguable that Spain and France rank higher than Brazil (rank: 3) in government adoption of free software but the rankings show that large governments who could be doing amazing programs like the United States (rank: 28) are being beaten out by developing nations like Venezuela, Peru, South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam — even Costa Rica (population: 4 million).

A lot of people have blogged about this web app from Red Hat. But, perhaps the OSI data could be used as a Technology Policy Corruption Index when combined with lobbying data for companies like Microsoft. After all, when was the last time an impoverished kid who would benefit from a free software telecentro wined and dined a U.S. Senator?

The real world impact of technology policy failures in the US, using an example from the public education system:
To illustrate what it means to be “left in Brazil’s dust” on technology education policy, you can go to Adams Memorial Middle School’s “Computer Lab” homepage — graciously hosted by Tripod — and you’ll get a pop-ad ad when you click to enter the site (we got a scantily-clad woman selling a weight-loss scam … what will you get?).

Venturing further inside, there were 3 amusing Google AdWords ads: “Online High School”, “Homeschooling” and “Stratford Private School” … ahem … meanwhile, their “Technology Strategy” includes “Upgrade word processing programs to Microsoft Word” some time in FY 2008 and “Standardizing on district wide word processing to two tiers of Office 2007″.

When one takes a look at their Technology Plan Financial Worksheet, one can see that an astounding $50,000 dollars is allocated to this “Standardizing on district wide word processing to two tiers of Office 2007″ task. How can upgrading a word processing program take so much away from this school’s technology budget?

Meanwhile, the Brazilian government supports the Brazilian version of OpenOffice and has already installed 40,000 copies at 2,000 schools in the state of Paraná for $0 in software fees. Nationally, Brazil is building 53,000 computer labs that will serve 52 million students, using entirely free software. According to the World Bank, the US is the 4th richest country in the world, compared to Brazil’s ranking of 66.

We don’t mean to pick on the Adams-Chesire Regional School District in Massachusetts … they honestly were just the first public school to come up in a Google Search and we don’t really know anything outside of what we’ve learned via online searches. They seem to be relatively better-off than many parts of the country. But, that’s kind of the point. One can take any public school in the US and see what the policy of “proprietary knowledge” and “closed technology” has wrought.

That said, there is a glimmer of hope in that one of the line items on their Technology Strategy document is: “Investigate new software that would actually be used to enrich / extend / supplement curriculum” … we would urge this school district and all the public school systems who are fighting the well-known battle to provide quality education to U.S. students to “investigate new software” that could provide a more coherent, cutting-edge technology education at lower costs, with the help of the free software movement. For more information on the impact of technology policy on U.S. education policy, see a previous item from this website: Public tech education in United States lags behind poorer countries.