Israel-HP boycott to cost Marrickville millions for replacement technology

Stan Beer
Thursday, 14 April 2011 15:40

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Marrickville Council will face a bill of at least $3 million and possibly considerably more to replace HP computers because of a boycott and divestment policy of the Jewish state voted in by a majority of Green councilors. In fact, there is a question of whether the Council will be able to find useful replacement policy compliant computers at all.

 

In a policy move that has been causing national Greens leader Bob Brown embarrassment since December last year, the Marrickville Council, headed by Greens mayor Fiona Byrne, voted to sign up to the global BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign which seeks to delegitimise Israel because of its alleged occupation of Palestinian territories.

The Israel boycott by Marrickville was subsequently blamed for the surprise defeat of Fiona Byrne by her Labor opponent in the recent NSW election which blew Labor out of the water in nearly all remotely marginal electorates.

In its business paper for the upcoming April 19 council meeting, Marrickville Council has named Hewlett Packard and Motorola as two companies that should be boycotted because of their "support" for Israel in the Palestinian territories. Both companies supply computing and security equipment to Israel at Israeli checkpoints, including the border separation wall, according to the Council.

As a result, Marrickville Council is floating two options - immediately scrapping existing equipment and contracts or boycotting future acquisitions from the suppliers.

The Council acknowledges that even boycotting future acquisitions would be costly because it would no longer be able to upgrade existing hardware.

The boycott would include: "computer hardware, software and systems provided by Hewlett Packard and Motorola, which includes the core of Council's operational information technology system."

The Council freely acknowledges in the Business Paper that its stance is going to be a costly exercise:

"The cost of replacing HP equipment could be around $3 million considering equipment replacement, existing leasing contracts penalties, staff retraining and consultancy to install new equipment; operational costs could increase between 10 and 20% annually. In addition, Council would have to replace Trim (Records Management System) at a cost of approximately $200,000 plus.

"Impacts of this action would include the need to retrain all Council staff, removing the existing integration with other systems and consultancy for implementation. This would add a further $100,000 to the cost of implementing a new records management system. It should be noted that the cost of replacement of the Motorola equipment and subsequent retraining is in the order of $150,000."

The question of how the Council intends to fund its vision of helping to delegitimise one of Australia's allies is unclear. However, today it held the line that ratepayers would not have to pay.

Another question that Marrickville Council may be forced to consider is the fact that most business computers these days, including HP, contain Intel components. Intel has massive financial ties to Israel and many of the chipmaker's most strategic products are designed and manufactured in its Israel plants. If the BDS movement decides to put Intel on its boycott list, Marrickville may have to reconsider its policy.