A graduate student at California State University Monterey Bay is seeking input from municipal information technology managers, technicians, support staff, city officials and city staff in an online survey on the use of open source software by municipal governments. The project seeks to determine whether cities with populations under 500,000 can provide services and conduct business using only open source software.

The study, which is being conducted by David Ward for his Master's thesis, seeks to answer three main questions:

1. Are there open source alternatives to commercial software currently used by city governments?
2. Do city governments have the technical capability to deploy and support open source software?
3. Does a city's organizational culture encourage the adoption of open source software?

The survey, available at http://etao.csumb.edu/softwaresurvey, consists of 37 questions that can be answered in less than 10 minutes. Participants will be offered free copies of the final research report. For more information, contact Ward at David_Ward@csumb.edu or his professor, Dr. Eric Tao, at Eric_Tao@csumb.edu.