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Challenge to Transfer IT Power in MA
Andy Updegrove writes "Linda Hamel, the General Counsel of the Massachusetts department that is struggling to establish ODF for state use, has prepared a challenge to those in the State Senate that would strip State CIO Peter Quinn of his power to set IT policy. Her analysis graphically describes why a task force of political appointees has no business telling more than 2000 IT professionals what to do."
It is funny how anti-government geeks can be when it matters to them and how anti-freedom they can be when it is about controlling others. In "Taxachusetts" regulations are especially violent professional opinion and private rights.
I recommend dismantling the FDA and letting professionals do their jobs -- the doctors and researchers.
I recommend dismantling the SEC and letting professionals do their jobs -- the brokers and economists.
I recommend dismantling the DOEd and letting professionals do their jobs -- the teachers and testers.
I recommend dismantling FEMA and letting professionals do their jobs -- the insurers and engineers.
Now, when someone recommends that bureaucrats set IT standards, it's tyranny!
Look at what you're wanting: free market decisions created competitively by experts. Look at what you'll get from your previous voting records: bureaucrats with the power to set legal monopolies.
Enter room. Make bed. Sleep in it.
Her analysis graphically describes why a task force of political appointees has no business telling more than 2000 IT professionals what to do.
I'm glad that somebody has a clue. Micromanagement is obviously the job of your Pointy Haired Boss.
I sense those in the state senate have shiny new Swiss bank accounts. Its funny how much Senators care when they are paid shills.
So the ODF opponents couldn't win their arguments to stick with MS formats, so instead they try restructuring the Government of MA??? This is just plum sick!
I asked the office of the secretary of state if there was an alternative format since I could not edit the document for electronic submittal. I was told (actual quote) "Our only suggestion would be to locate a typewriter; most likely at your local public library."
The rest of us have to contend with IT management that have little to no IT experience, skill or qualification, why should the MA state IT dept be any different?
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
that no matter what decision is made in Mass., it *WILL* affect similar decisions around the globe. Even if the 'govermment' of Mass. decides to do things in a completely hair-brined way, others will see it for what it is. Not every state has a setup where the position of state CIO is in question, or could be.
The simple fact that this is becoming a 3-ring circus of zealous charicatures means that it will continue to be an issue around the globe for longer than it takes Mass. to cash the checks from Microsoft. More likely than not, if MS wins the 'contract' battle, another virus will put paid to the value of that decision. Even if ODF is not firmly established in the Mass. IT arena, it is gaining ground elsewhere, and this circus just gives more publicity to the reasons for having ODF in the first place.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/korn/LargePrintWe blog/20051113
I'm not fat, just big boned...
While its obviously not the whole story, this move does have all the classic fingerprints of a sourcing effort shooting for savings through leveraged negotiations with vendors. With control of all the
"(1) procurement policies by commonwealth agencies, constitutional offices, and other government entities concerning computer hardware and software, cellular telephones, personal data accessories, and other information technology devices"
the single office in charge of contracting can force standardization and negotate discounted contracts. Combine that with implied savings from standardization of technologies and resulting reduction in support costs and you get a nice presentation at the end of the year that you can show all your bosses showing you saved the state $X million. With that level of spending the $X is going to be a mighty big number.
If its not something like that then somebody better make very sure any contract signed is arms length - the next most obvious rationale would be lining one's pockets.
Just what the people in our government should be worrying about right now is ODF, who the hell cares what kind of documents they are using or are going to use. Regardless of your opinion on the subjects, there is the war in Iraq, Social Security, Health Care, Education, the Economy and about a dozen other topics that deserve some attention before anyone should be cusading for a new document format. I mean seriously, there are so many other more important issues on the table...
So what's this bullshit that every time I load a page on Slashdocile I see some kind of data transfer to or from google-analytics.com? Is there anyone around anymore that's not standing in line to be violated by Oh-So-Hip Google?
Google, a VA Linux for our only slightly less greedy and stupid time.
EVERY SINGLE COMMENT 'dada21' makes appears to be anarcho-capitalist in some way, for good, for bad.
The 'free market' --in this case, everyone stuck on Microsoft proprietary formats--IS NOT FREE IN ANY WAY.
If it was up to dada21 the USA would abandon all of its social programs. Does he understand that this is not the state governments telling companies what to do, it is their own damn internal policy?
"Taxachusetts"? Ever been to Europe, buddy? Alabama (failing schools, shitty roads, ridiculous poverty) is not the centre of the universe.
Nice troll.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Am I the only one who can't follow this article? It has no introduction... so I have no way of knowing what it's trying to say.
And if we focous all our attention on the "more important" things, after we are done with this round of "the war in $country, Social Security, Health Care, Education, the Economy and about a dozen other topics that deserve some attention", we will discover that all the little things have broken while we were crusading. Just because something isnt THE issue of the day doesnt mean it doesn't need to be taken care of.
The last time I was in an IT position as a developer/data analyst at a fortune 100 company, myself and the other memebers of the team kept saying, "Hey ******, things are technilogically bad here, and the IT department agrees, we really need to step things up and make the following 5 changes: ", (then we listed 5 boring, but neccessary changes).
So after that, ****** decided to hire a team of IBM consultants to determine what the real problem was. They promptly had a meeting with us, where we shared our 5 changes that needed to be made, and were told a week later that IBM came up with 5 amazing outside-the-box changes to turn the company around.
A year and a half later, I'm at a different job where I make the decisions, and ****** is in the same position they were before, with more and more money being poured into consultants while the IT professionals remain unheard.
And, just another warning about IT professionals: I had a boss once that refused to allow me to install a Linux-based webserver, and instead poured over $800 into software simply to run IIS. It took a few weeks to get the software in, another week to get it configured, and yet another week to lock it down tight and get the file permissions to run properly. (keep in mind IIS kindly ignores windows file permissions on a fairly random basis, at least from my experience.) Now that that IT Professional has left to do ASP development elsewhere, I spent 3 days learning how to set up a linux webserver and lock it down, and 1 day actually carrying out what I learned. It has thus far cost us nothing, and we have yet to get a virus.
IT professionals are the #1 target it seems for Microsoft donations, so its no wonder most are drooling over Microsoft Office software. Most individuals I've worked with (even the Microsoft Certified Developers) have chosen Open Source solutions this past year because of how much they've developed, and how easy they are to work with. Maybe we need a bureaucratic geek to make the decisions anyway, since the self proclaimed IT Professionals either aren't doing such a hot job, or don't have the power to make these decisions anyway.
One last bit of info: forcing the use of non-proprietary software for developing publically available documents should be federal law by now, IMO, and using proprietary software should be considered obstructing access to the public domain. Why not tear down the wheelchair ramps while we're at it? And if Microsoft is truly non-proprietary in their new XML format, then let's use that too, but don't side with a single vendor when a globally available standard is sitting there, free of charge, easy to implement, waiting to be taken advantage of.
Most for-profit vendors have always been just that, For Profit. Most Open Source solutions and free-domain solutions set forth by not-for-profit organizations have been just that, Not For Profit. If something isn't for profit, and isn't for political gain, then odds are it is strictly being developed for the betterment of society. I guess the honest question now, when confronted with accepting the logically obvious decision, is "Why start now?", to which I say, "To make up for lost times."
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
Why does a small northeastern state need 2000 IT professionals in it's government?
After you're done with the big fight about the format of the memos, how about working on trying to get that number down to under 1000, m'kay?
So basically, from the featured article, an "amendment" to an economic bill can result in rather severe changes to how the various parts of the MA government can operate? Somehow this seems familiar, we've seen these things happen before in the EU and elsewhere in the US when certain big mono- and oligopolists wants something which is not quite within scope of the currently proposed legislation, something that would be more obviously suspect if proposed as a separate bill.
Perhaps it is time for general ban "riders" and "amendments" that change the overall meaning of some proposed regulation, unless their consequences have been evaluated, or perhaps just an overall ban: if a bill is to be changed or augmented, it has to be cancelled and reintroduced from scratch. Something needs to be done about rampant law-making in general, this part of governments have been allowed to run riot and overwhelm the judicial processes. In MA as elsewhere.
Of course, this would just be another law, adding to the mess...
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
If you're trollling: Nice one, you got me to respond.
If you're not: RTFA
The link is not to a temper tantrum from a "techie"; it's to a blog, which links to a well-reasoned argument from an ITD lawyer who lays out both why Quinn was within his discretion as head of the ITD and why centralizing all IT decsionmaking in Massachusetts is a bad idea.
Quinn is NOT making a huge change for all citizens: the citizens can use MS Word if they want to, submit Word documents to the Commonwealth if they want to, and receive Word documents from the Commonwealth if they request that format. All this says is that when the Commonwealth goes to archive these documents, it will archive them in ODF 1.0 or in PDF 1.5.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
They've ignored us...
They've laughed at us...
Now it seems that they are fighting us!!
Wohooo!!!
There is a lot to be said for elected officials making these choices. But will they look out for our best interest?
Until all business, non-profits, and unions are prevented from lobbying, they can not be trusted to have our (the voters) best interest at heart.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I moved to the USA from the UK, and I pay more (percentage-wise) tax here in CA than I did in London, and that's *after* going to HR-Block to get as much off as I can. I averaged around 38% in the UK (after expenses and including national-insurance), and here my bill is more like 43% after federal and state tax.
Going to buy a house in the New Year (been saving all year for the deposit - $800k for a house is almost as bad as London!) so I'll get a larger tax-break then, but I rented in London too...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Most companies, people who have called the IT department because they could not figure out how to turn on their computers will set IT policy or will mandate technology shifts because they got sold by someone that sounded good. Meanwhile, the IT people who actually know about the stuff are forced to impliment bad decisions knowing it will usually cost more and mean more work for them.
Then again, there's the commerce clause which states:Clearly, if the states adopt incompatible document standards, there would be a problem. Ostensibly, Congress dealt with this issue when it created the National Bureau of Standards and left standardization issues to them. However, in this case, there's clearly a set of deep pockets wandering around trying to influence Congress to take a special oversite interest in this particular standard.
How to counteract somebody handing out millions of dollars? Talk to your congressperson.
Back when Clinton was pushing the Clipper chip, I put together a group of technologists and setup a meeting with my local congressman. We told him why Clipper was a bad idea and why people needed strong encryption. Once he understood that banking and trade could be adversely affected if people couldn't be sure their purchases were secure, he agreed to vote against the proposal.
There were lots of geeks doing the same thing across the country and the Clipper died as a result. It can happen again.
The problem is that these organization you mentions while not able to vote do comprise a great amount of what makes the state work. Placing a created entity's opinions above those of a real person is a problem but they should be without any imput on the matters.
I do question the powers they have though. stoping them from imputing altogether would be much like employers only increasing profits by 2% and employies demanding a 15% increase in pay each year. Eventualy someone isn't going to have any money. The same would be true if corperations didn't have any say in governemntal offairs. As it stands, i think they do have too much say but cuting thier say out isn't the answer. (i don't know the answer that works either)
On one hand, MS did get a start into the position they are in due to free market forces. On the other, they have abused government force to finish getting there. However, their practices are not really the point in this one. What is important is that public information should not be in a proprietary format.
However, State ITD is not really going about this the right way. You need to have discussion, specifications need to be drawn up, you need to write an RFP and go to bid, etc. They chose a format without going through the right steps. They didn't necessary choose the right thing, they simply choose the thing they liked. In this way, government is very different from business.
Personally, I agree that OpenDocument is the best option out there. It's a fully opened format that can do everything that needs to be done. That's why I'm changing to the format. If all the Towns are lucky, DLS will change away from MS formats. Maybe then the garbage Excel sheets loaded with subtly broken VBA will go away.
As far as dada21 and the government reduction, etc, there is a good point there. You can track many of the problems in the US to government taking a problem, "fixing it" and then continually having to "fix" the "fix". At the very least, all of the social programs at the Federal level should be dismantled. They are unconstitutional, and far outside the scope appropriate for the programs. The US is not a socialist country, it is a federalist republic. The concentration of power at the Federal level is in direct opposition to that.
Alabama is also not the only place like that, by any means. The Federal has stripped the populace of their money, removed power from State and municipal governments, and uses that tax revenue to control the lower levels. Much of the populace is hovering just above poverty, many schools are failing, and roads are pretty crappy all around. You can blame a lot of that on government forcing things at the wrong level. The people responsible for the work don't get to be involved with the decisions, and don't have the ability to collect the funding to pay for it without "help" from above. It's a recipe that guarantees failure.
The government doing it is usually not the right answer. The Federal doing it is almost always not the right answer. There was a very good reason that it was severely limited by the original Constitution.
You are so off the mark I hardly know where to begin. The CIO is appointed, get over it. There are lots and lots of people hired by state government to carry out the business of the state. It would be a disaster if a state CIO had to raise funds and campaign for office.
The decision to adopt ODF was not an arbitrary CIO decision. A process was followed to identify the needs of the Commonwealth. Then there was a panel composed of industry representatives, (Microsoft, Sun, Novell, Redhat and others were all there.) PDF and ODF were determined to be the best fit for document formats that meet the needs of the Commonwealth. Being open formats, they are well documented, they will be readable generations from now, and their openness ensures that Massachusetts can accept bids from a variety of vendors. There's also a big piece about converting data from legacy systems.
As for the elected officials being concerned with the document format --- consider if the IT department does nothing. Within a few years everyone will be creating MSXML formatted documents, with no input from elected officials, and what's more to the point, with absolutely no examination of the implications of that format change.
"If the ELECTED officials want to form a task force of qualified industry specialists to analyze a change in THEIR state that will affect the people they represent they are not only entitled to do so, but should." -- Did you read the article? The task force consists of 8 people, possibly 3 of whom will know anything about technology. Of those 3, two will be representatives from industry -- one in IT, one in telecom. The remaining 5 people all have other full time duties. The point of the fine article is that the CIO is being strongly supported by the General Counsel to the department that will be affected by the ODF document policy. (In case you didn't realize it, the move to ODF was a policy decision within the Executive Branch, the response is coming in the form of an amendment being considered by the Legislative Branch-- an amendment which, according to general counsel, will effectively paralyze the Commonwealth.
So getting back on track here, keep the following points in mind. (1) Mass. ITD did something well within their mandate, and they did it in a public and proper way. (2) A member of the Mass. legislature became upset or fearful, perhaps due to influence from a large corporation's lobbyists (3) In response, an amendment with far-reaching effects on the commonwealth's ability to conduct business was attached to an unrelated bill. (4) A department whose job is to point out the implications of government decisions has weighed in against the amendment.
In summary, this is a good thing. Whether you are for or against vendors actually meeting the stated needs of their customers, you must agree that an ill-considered amendment to an unrelated bill is not the best way for a legislator to deal with his fear of change.
Why? Are you saying that a corporations input into gov. will actually increase the gov's intake as well as lower their cost? From everything that I have seen, when a corp. inputs into a gov. the gov loses money (and possibly a few politians will get rich).
In addition, if a company wants to deal with the gov. they can interact with none elected employees.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
well heres a no-brainer, why the goddamn hell waste millions on buying M$ Office when they could use a FREE 80meg download of OpenOffice again for FREE, and as a side note: I use it myself, and it has damn near every feature MS Office gives you and then some, like a one-touch button on the word processor to turn it into a PDF... the ONLY TWO things MS Office has that I actually use are the auto-correct/dictionary, and the readability report after a spell check.
well?
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
In certain matter yes. I the case were corperations are using the governemtn as thier clients the answe would probably be no.
I guess my point could have been state differently. That is if a company opens a plant in this state, they should have some input to the laws and regulation being made in that state. This doesn't mean the state needs to be thier customers rather they are customers of the state. They use thier services and protections as any indevidual might but have a greater impact to the economics of the state. They deserve some input into the workings and governing of the state simular to the people of the state.
Imagine what would happen if a silly law passed that allowed all felons to carry concealed firearms. You being upset over it decide to move to another state without such nonsence laws. Now imagine the impact on that state and the people living in it. Now imagine you are that company and you employ 200 people and consider the difference in the impact. We can substitute a silly law with tax increases or workers benifits or exesive insurance requirments or public tranportation policy.
Alot of every day policy has effects on companies residing in the states that don't directly do business with that state. To remove thier imput altogether (like some would enjoy) could stiffle thier ability to profit and provide the jobs and tax base the state enjoys.
Think of how much it must have cost MS to "influence" all the people needed so that restructuring a state legislature isn't dismissed out of hand. To say nothing of the PR groups, the pay-for-pay reporting (mentioning no names, Boston Globe) and all the rest of it.
Anything Quinn might have wanted - it would have been cheaper to just give it to him. The fact that this wrangle is still going on suggests that this isn't about negotiated discounts or personal profit. Especially since Microsoft's preserving their highly lucrative office software monopoly with its 75% profit margins remains a far more plausible explanation.
Oh, and speaking of the Boston Globe, did you know they printed complete retraction of the smear job they did on Qinn? Right in the back where no-one would see it, but printed nevertheless. With all the current attempts to smear Quinn, I think any genuine dirt would have surfaced by now.
Lacking any actual wrongdoing, the best they can manage is cheap innuendo
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
First off, you have to keep in mind that a corp never decides to be some place. They have no mind. Instead, it is a CEO (or sometimes a committee) that decides it. So where does a CEO move a company to? Where they like to live. Here in colorado, we lost a lot of company HQ due to the fact that during the economic downturn, they would look out of state for executives. No problem except when the exec was CEO. In just about ever case, the CEO said that they would move to Colorado, but once in as CEO, they decide to travel for awhile. After about 6 months, they would announce that the company HQ was moving to right where the CEO lived. More often than not, it was based on family or amenable living condition. That means low taxes, low real eastate, good schools, etc, (and not necessarily in that order).
About the only thing that a state does that impacts it, is the taxes (of which stock holders care more about, not the employees, unless they are major holders) and amenities that enable a state to bring in good employees.
Finally, while I was suggesting that a company should not be able to lobby or pay an elected official, I do belive that individuals (i.e. the humans that vote) do have a right to see their represenative/senator. That would include the CEO and other execs. Sadly, reps. not only allow, but push the lobbyists so that they get loads of money for elections.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's its simplest term, an IT professional is someone who gets paid for doing IT. That can mean a useless guy who's crammed up to pass some exams, or a guy who can proverbially make square pegs fit round holes with software.
A lot of IT pros that I know take a professional view of software. They want to build the best solution. That can mean OSS or closed, paid for software. I concur with what you say - many are now looking at OSS solutions.
There's also no conflict between profit and OSS. I built a site for someone and used OSS for profitable reasons. All the software (Apache, PHP, MySQL) was free, hosting was a lot less of a struggle to set up and the support costs have been almost nil. Not only that, but OSS development changes based on developer needs. Languages like PERL and PHP evolve over time. That means that your investment in them as a developer is not wasted, where a closed-source solution can mean a company deciding that they want to ditch a tool and rewrite the world, leaving developers with no choice but to climb a steep ladder of learning of cost and risk, for no real-world benefit.
The other thing I like with OSS - tools don't become expired with the new version of an OS or the next version requires an OS upgrade - these mean I can keep a stable environment that I am used to - reducing downtime/retraining time and raising productivity. I partly do this to reduce the frustration of development, but this also means I can develop faster and with more stability - and that's good for the bottom line.
People should add up all the lost time with certain closed solutions compared with the advertised productivity gains. Having to replace developer skills in one language with another language costs the equivalent of months of lost time in retraining (retraining takes a lot longer than just the two weeks on a training course - it takes time to get used to all the ways that the new environment "works" in all it's subtle little ways.
Stop it.
Sorry, but I need to pick a nit. It seems that the nudge-n-wink was directed to the legislature, in an effort to deprive the executive branch of their IT autonomy. I know people here are eager to dump on "this administration", whomever that may be at the time, but this time, "this administration" are our heroes.
Anyone else think the guy at pictured at the link looks like Melvin Frohike of the Lone Gunmen? :)
[ home ]
As usual, Microsoft is acting more like a crime syndicate, than a corporation.
Microsoft doesn't care that everyone can see what they are doing. On the contrary, Microsoft wants other politicians to get the message, which is, "Do what we want, or there will be consequences."
And it will probably work, at least, for a while. Most politicians would rather deal with criminals, than have their jobs threatened.
But it won't always work. Many people, including politicians, don't take kindly to extortion.
This will only add to the growing sentiment to avoid Microsoft, and its products, altogether. A growing number of businesses and political jurisdictions will have the guts to stand up to Microsoft, and choose other alternatives.
Eventually, the day will come when even the most cowardly politicians and CEOs will feel emboldened enough to say no to Microsoft.
how the government can be bought - IT professionals chose a solution based on an open standard and not on a vendor's product so it's CITIZENS can have access to their documents without having to buy a certain software product. What a concept.
But now they get restructured and told what to do because microsoft has some politicians in it's pockets.
Sure makes our forefathers proud doesn't it? Glad my dad fought in WWWII so these greedy politicians can sit on their fat arses and tell people how to do their jobs when they have no clue on how to do it themselves.
Anybody that doesn't think microsoft is running the government here in this instance is a fool and should wake up and smell the coffee. It pisses me off that more people aren't pissed off about this and let this happen.
All: Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Karl: Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Lenny: Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
Alien: We do! We do!
All: Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Skinner: Who robs cavefish of their sight?
Homer: Who rigs every Oscar night?
All: We do! We do!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
It's become obvious that the politicians in MA have no power at all to set IT policy, hence the crap thrown at Peter Quinn (he's the one they want to be bribing). They would, in effect, have to pass some sort of legislation that would dictate the use of Microsoft Office, or that would define Microsoft's formats as some sort of open standard so Office could continue to be used. However, trying to legally and legislatively do something about that would be rather messy and wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.
I really don't know why IBM, Sun, Novell and others aren't throwing money and pressure at this. It is worth quite a bit of money to them.
If you're a resident of MA- please take the time to write your Senator and Representative to express your support for Mr. Quinn and the ODF. You can look up your representatives here: http://www.mass.gov/legis/citytown.htm
Here's what I've sent to my Senator. The letter to my Rep added that as one of the few Republicans in the House he might want to take this opportunity to distinquish himself....
Hon Steven Panagiotakos
Room 218
Boston, MA 02133
Dear Senator,
I am writing to express my support for the recent efforts of the Massachusetts CIO, Peter Quinn in his drive to ensure accessibility for the citizens of Massachusetts. I'm very disappointed the Senate would consider ignoring or altering the recommendations of Mr. Quinn and his staff. The citizens of Massachusetts deserve to have unfettered access to the electronic records of the state. Our state has an opportunity to step out and obtain widespread recognition for leadership; we should not succumb to backroom deals or crooked politics- it is vital we follow the recommendations of Mr. Quinn and adopt the Open Document Format for all documents and publications. I value our freedom to choose and do not wish to be subject to the whims of a monopoly. The adoption of the Open Document Format is an important step in taking back the information paid for by our tax dollars. What is paid for by all should be accessible to all and no alternative is acceptable.
Respectfully,
I can agree with you assesment as along as the CEO could reasonably voice an opinion as CEO and maybe a different one as a citizen. But then thats the same as the company having a voice.
Sometimes what is good for the company and I contend that more then taxes could effect a company's disposition, Might not be exactly whats good for the oficcers of the company for various reasons. The company pay taxes just as the CEO does. It should have somewhat of a voice. I'm not thinking it should eb a big voice but then how do you determine how big of a voice is neccsary when the government's policy could effect the 200 employies working there. 'even when the company's position is at odds with the officers position. (think profit verses family or public image verses censorship. Lots of differing reasons)
>> a task force of political appointees has no business telling more than 2000 IT professionals what to do.
Yeah, but that's not going to stop them. They stick their noses into all kinds of places they have no business, from the design of shower heads to the rules of baseball.
Holy shit. Graphics? She is sure to convince them with pictures.
This is clearly a case of state Seantors attempting to alter the executive branch's good faith efforts to run IT in the interests of the citizens. So mod this up, the grandparent post was wrong to blame the executive branch.
Think global, act loco
People joke that Louisiana is the northernmost bananna republic. I hope not to have to welcome Mass to the club, but turnabout is fair play.
The more I think about it, the more Microsoft looks like the United Fruit Company. The only differences are that the United Fruit Company actually built real infrastructure, like railroads, and you can only grow a bananna in the tropics. It looks like you can farm PCs and treat their users like peons at any latitude.
Let's see if a great US state with some of the best IT staff and best universities for IT in the world can resist bribery and persue excellence. If they can't, no one can. That's what this is all about. The world is watching and M$ is desperate to "demonstrate" that IT experts want M$ junk.
What's funny is that their demonstration proves only that M$ is used only because it's forced on people by idiots.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Please look at the OpenOpenOffice project The plug in is already under way, at least if you have network access or are willing to install OpenOpenOffice locally. OpenOffice can already read & write Microsoft formats, so it makes sense to leverage this in the OpenOpenOffice solution. Of course, this doesn't help if Microsoft decides to sue OpeOffice for implementing MS Office Open XML, but that would result in a seperate firestorm of criticism for Microsoft, espeically overseas. The OpenOpenOffice solution is simple (as in elegant, not as in brain dead) & should be done long before January 2007. A cottage industry for OpenOffice is already underway.
Think global, act loco
What does this have to do with document formats? If you're claiming equal access, people that need wheelchair ramps don't have a choice. Running OSS is.
I spent 3 days learning the differences between Linux web serving and Windows web serving. I have been using linux for a few years, and the Windows 2003 webserver was the only Windows server in the server room. Everything else was linux based or Netware based. The IT Professional was a Microsoft fanatic, and refused to learn anything new, and left me with a bitter taste because she ignored the reccomendations of myself, other staff members, the previous person in her position, and the department that shared the server room with us. Because she was officially our LAN Administrator, our department listened to her. Now we are left with a server with nobody knowing how to fully support it, and she did not document what she had done to get it working.
I was exaggerating, yes, about getting the webserver up and running, but it did take 2 weeks to have the software mailed to us, because we are a not-for-profit university and we had problems with getting the software from our vendor without paying taxes. The IT Professional I was talking about then spent an extra 2 weeks getting the server up and running because it was not as simple as she thought. I have gotten IIS servers up within an hour just fine, but she was learning how to have multiple IPs on the same machine, and was trying to learn ASP so she could make the applications herself.
The point of the post was that there are 2 very common types of IT Professionals, and 1 very rare type:
Common Types:
1. Very intelligent, but ignored by their manager.
2. Very gullible/opinionated, and listened to by their manager.
Rare Type:
1. Very intelligent, and listened to by their manager.
So the point is, to avoid fanatics (both Open Source and Closed source), it sometimes helps if your organization gets together and chooses a standard to follow.
I think that more than one person should be involved in the research of what document format to choose, and that it should be opened to the public forum. I find it amusing that a non-IT individual is saying a bureaucrat should not make the decision for 2000 IT professionals, but by blocking this decision, the non-IT bureaucrat is doing just that. Unless, of course, all IT departments in the government offices in MA are using whatever each individual IT Professional feels like, in which case there could be any number of file formats floating around.
All in all, I think a decision should be made, and IT Professionals and the general public should be involved in the decision. IT Professionals, who have a $430 copy of Office 2003 Professional handed to them free-of-charge, should not be enforcing that as a standard that individuals who clip coupons for a $0.30 can of chicken noodle soup are going to have to follow.
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
It sounds like you and your counterpart had a very basic misunderstanding.
The PDF is there for you to print out, fill out, and mail in. (that's snail mail for those that need it spelled out for you)
At this point your options are many. I'd reccomend just taking a screenshot of the PDF and putting it as the background of a word document. Type your text out on top, print out, mail it.
(oopse did I say word? I meant OOo.Document)
To me the format of a doc is secondary to whether or not I can get access to it in the first place. Private companies such as Westlaw have almost total control of the document store such that getting the information you need in the first place is so expensive that the average Joe cannot afford it.
You don't know how to spell "Massachusetts," do you?
I worked in corporate IT (at a huge bank) for 17 years, and --thank God-- just quit 6 months ago, EXACTLY for these kinds of power-plays by the IT-ignorant.
The worst part of these situations is that the whole process of centralized IT decisions is generally started by well-meaning managers who are appalled at anecdotal evidence of inefficencies, failures, and (in some cases) out-and-out corruption. Then the whole thing gets out of hand and turns into a "the geeks at IT don't know how to manage technology and align it with the organization's goals, so we have to tell them what to do at every step of the way."
Then the cycles of silver-bullet management fixes don't stop, and actually overlap: one "solution" hasn't even shown its possible benefits when the next one comes along. Management overhead then starts eating up more than half of IT's time and efforts, in a downward spiral.
The MA Commonwealth people have to see that micromanagement via committee (a.k.a. "task force") simply Does Not Work.
Committees are good for doing meta-management: setting agendas and guidelines, and using feedback to see if those guidelines are helping people follow the agendas. As part of that guideline-setting process, the committee MUST delegate responsibility, and permit ostensibly extra-agenda actions to be carried out, providing that the person who is doing that action has a way of proving that it really does follow the agenda, and it must permit them to prove it AFTER the fact. This is so people can do their job without waiting in line to get a bunch of signatures. If in fact the actions prove to be irrelevant to the agenda, then the bright IT guy will get sacked, but then the majority of IT guys who are following the agenda will be able to do the Right Thing without sitting on their backsides waiting for paperwork.
Well, in a nutshell, that's why I left corporate IT: I got tired of wasting time on committees and sitting on good ideas because too many people were covering their derrieres aginst the day that the centralized task force/committee/whatever will "(p)review" their projects. BTW, I was no bottom feeder in the IT department: I was two steps below the CIO/CTO, so I saw this up close and personal.
The fact that in most companies you get a couple of technical "architects" who think they know what they are doing, who establish some policy or "framework" as we like to call them and tell the rest of us to go implement it.
First the disclaimer: I don't live in Massachusetts (thank Ghod)
Could be worse.
You could be from Texas.
DOH!
The CIO of Mass. is making a political decision rather than a technical one, in choosing this Open Document format.(or whatever it is called) If it was purely technical, it would be based on whether the format did the job and what the cost was. But instead the decision had a large component of emotion behind it's making.
Anyway, considering it's a political decision it only makes sense for elected officials to review it.
I see nothing wrong with this... checks and balances is part of our division of government.