The U.S. Government and Windows 7

He wants you... to move to Windows 7

We all want our governments to be more efficient, right? Many United States government offices have plans to do this by moving to Windows 7 within six to twelve months, though some need to jump significant security hurdles first.

A Dell survey of 205 government IT shops found that about 50% of those surveyed had plans to move in a year or less, with another 37% saying that they’d like to make the move in a year or more – most cited new features and functionality as the reason to upgrade. Many are also planning to coordinate the rollout of Windows 7 with the retirement of older Windows XP machines.

By comparison, a July survey of private businesses found that only about a third of enterprises were planning on rolling out Windows 7 within a year of release.

The U.S. government adoption rate, then, looks to be significantly higher. In a blog post, Microsoft’s Teresa Carlson points to the University of New Mexico, the State of Illinois, and the City of Miami in particular as early adopters of the OS.

However, before some agencies can deploy the new OS, a number of security settings need to be reviewed – the Federal Desktop Core Configuration is a list of hundreds of Windows settings that must be tested and approved before OS rollouts can begin. The purpose of the FDCC list is to make PCs more secure and less prone to hacking and malware infection – lists already exist for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but finalizing the Windows 7 list “will take until spring 2010, at least,” according to FDCC program manager Ken Page.

Once the Windows 7 FDCC is finished, government agencies can begin moving on to Microsoft’s latest and greatest – the U.S. Air Force, which just completed its rollout of Windows Vista this past summer, plans to upgrade more than half a million PCs to the new OS.

This is one area of government where your politics don’t matter – if you’re here, it’s safe to say that you want everyone to be using Windows 7, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on.