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Don Christie told iTWire today that 14 government agencies had joined the project which looked for an alternative desktop solution, with each providing some financial input.
The council in question is in the middle of the North Island. Additionally, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and New Zealand Post will be part of the trial.
NZ Post's participation was revealed last year; the other agency was named by Christie in a talk on the topic he presented to the 11th Australian national Linux conference in Wellington yesterday.
The solution was sourced and tested by technical experts and overseen by the New Zealand Open Source Society.
The solution put together includes Ubuntu as the desktop O-S, Firefox as the browser, OpenOffice.org as the office suite and Alfresco as the content management system.
In many cases, when private or public sector bodies try to effect a switch to FOSS desktops, Microsoft has, in the past, managed to abort the switch by offering rock-bottom discounts and getting the decision reversed on the basis of lower cost.
In response to a query, Christie said the chances were reasonably high that something like this would be attempted.
"That's why transparency is important. So is getting real competition. And we must look at the long-term effects of a deal, the real cost. These would help counteract that kind of thing," Christie said.
The project to provide the desktop alternative was begun in August last year under the name Public Sector Remix, under the direction of the NZOSS.
Three months prior to that, New Zealand's government-wide deal to purchase Microsoft products fell apart. Instead of the three-year deals that Microsoft had concluded in the past, the country retained the option to obtain "recommended retail price certainty for agencies as a basis for their individual negotiations".
