E-mail sent on 23rd June to post-uioledelsen@admin.uio.no:

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/aktuelt/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.