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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."
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.
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
Microsoft is NOT a monopoly? Who locks vendors into their software? Who tried to block other media players on their OS? Who committed numerous acts of perjury at their antitrust trial?
Locking vendors into your software isn't a monopolistic practice, it is common every day business practice and has been since time immemorial. You propose instead what? That Microsoft create and give to the world standards that anyone can write to for any platform? That's like telling Hardinge to create and give to the world a universal spindle standard. Standards are adopted by force of market, not idiotic movements.
Microsoft has every right to do with their OS whatever the Hell they wish and it is their job to respond to market forces or go out of business. If you want Linux to be adopted, make it as easy to use for the common user as Windows XP. It isn't, and won't be, because it is dominated by "hard is beautiful because it lets me show off because I have insecurity issues" geeks. XP isn't. My mother-in-law can maneuver through Windows XP Pro and Office XP like a speed demon. Ten years of training would be needed for her figure out how to find xorg.conf to change her monitor resolution and not fark it up. Most of the people thinking Linux is on par with Windows are either seriously delusional or too young to remember the lack of productivity in offices on DOS prior to Windows. It's MS' OS and they've cornered the market simply by putting out a better OS that at its worst is still better than Linux when it is slightly cranky. A truly farked Linux box is masochism delight.
They lied at an antitrust trial? Who farking doesn't? Since when does that create a monopoly?
Dada is right. It takes force and coercion to create a monopoly, only government can do it, and our government doesn't put a gun to anyone's head to make them buy Windows. They just want an OS that doesn't suck and Windows doesn't suck. Again, a committed Fedora Core user who can build apps from source and fix dependency Hell in his sleep is telling you this. But then, I happen to be a former programmer from back when we knew to write apps for real people to use and not whatever we bloody well felt like and screw the useability or common sense. Linux has "screw the common user" written all over it. Of course, it would given that it descends from Unix, arguably the dumbest thing ever conceived this side of OS/2. That no one is trying to make Linux into a monopoly doesn't make it better than Windows which only has the share that it does because it doesn't suck in comparison.
Why is this so hard to understand for the geeks of today? If we ran things years ago like you're trying to have them now, there'd be none of the nifty engineering and technological marvels there are because we'd have built whatever we felt like instead what the CORPORATIONS and the END USERS PAYING THEM wanted. And you'd not have PCs, the Internet, or anything else you use while taking them for granted to write your socialistic twaddle non-sequitr missives on Slashdot.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
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.
Her analysis graphically describes
Maybe it's just my computer nerdism showing, but if you're going to say "graphically" shouldn't there be... I dunno. A graph?
Was anyone else let down that there were no graphs? Not even a single picture.
Instead, we have a summary of "17 single-spaced pages of closely reasoned argument and information that Linda has crafted." Worse, her document is going to be "part of the Legislative Information Package relating to the proposed amendment."
Not to be cynical, but very few Massachusetts Senators are ever going to read her document. The only people who will probably ever open it are Senate aides and lobbyists.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Anyone else think the guy at pictured at the link looks like Melvin Frohike of the Lone Gunmen? :)
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People? People as in "The People", or as in "people working for the government"? Probably the second, in that case the CIO is telling his users what software to use. Which is pretty normal.
You might want to support these people. Put simply, they want to make Congress actually read every single bill out loud, in its entirety, and have those who vote on it sign an affidavit stating that they understand what they're voting for. This implies that any post-reading amendments would require another full reading before being voted on, which would stop any secret clauses being inserted "in committee".