The Australian Taxation Office fails to deliver Linux promise

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has broken a clear promise to provide a Unix/Linux client for its new Electronic Commerce Interface (ECI - http://eci.ato.gov.au) software. The ECI client allows businesses to, among other things, lodge their Business Activity Statements (BAS) electronically. As a result, Unix/Linux groups are not only planning to lobby for a change to the decision but also seek to establish an open communication between people and government community organisation.

The ECI software is a native client application that is used in conjunction with a standard Internet connection. When the first client for Windows was released in mid-2000, a promise was made to deliver a client for the Mac and Unix/Linux platforms. People who registered to lodge their BAS electronically received a CD with the Windows client software. The CD cover clearly stated that "development of the Apple Macintosh and Unix versions of the ECI are near completion but not available at this stage".

In a complete turn-around, the ATO has now decided not to release a client for Unix/Linux. This decision was revealed in a fax sent by the ATO to Ron Skeoch of Muli Management (www.muli.com.au), who campaigned to at least have the specifications of the ECI made public.

The fax explained why a Unix/Linux client was not released and stated, "at the time of the original ECI releases, we had no firm statistics of the numbers of businesses that wished to use the ECI and what operating systems they had. Accordingly, we invited businesses in these situations to contact our ESD Technical Support Centre and notify us of their operating system requirements. A significant number of businesses requested an Apple Macintosh version and we consequently released this in August 2000. A small number of requests were received for Unix/Linux versions."

The message went on to maintain that, due to this lack of demand, it was not cost effective to produce a Unix/Linux version, which is contrary to the previous statement that a Unix version was "near completion". Although a Mac client was released due to sufficient demand, a generic Java-based client which could work on all three operating systems was not. This forces businesses running Unix/Linux operating systems to submit their BAS with the paper forms.

Anthony Rumble, Managing Director of EverythingLinux (www.everythinglinux.com.au), had some opinions about the decision. "We're asking them for the specifications, not the software," said Rumble. "This whole decision is about more than just which operating system is used by the majority of people, its about open communication between the Government and the people." This sentiment was echoed by Skeoch: "We also intend to make the thrust broader by asking the Linux community to form a permanent 'government and open communication with its people' organisation."

The term "open communication" implies that government departments should be obliged to release any form of communication with the public as an open specification. In the case of software, this translates to making its source code available.

Although there may be no client provided in the short term, it is possible that the ATO will review the decision -- "in the event that the numbers of existing Unix/Linux users increased significantly over and above the existing numbers of requests", as the statement indicated.