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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."
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!
This is a case of a monopoly trying to close off competition to a competitor who does it free of charge. THAT is what the case comes down to.
That is what our federal government is. Drug companies support the FDA for quasimonopoly power. Radio conglomerates support the FCC. Teacher's unions support th DOEd.
Where do we differ?
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.
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.
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'm not exactly sure what the state of MA IT Director has to do with any of these topics, but choosing a standardized document format would be right up his alley. Unless of course MA's Head IT Guy has a Super-Gov-MegaBot which can cure everyone, end wars, fix SS, Education and the Economy in one fell swoop...
I only need the Preview button when I haven't used the Preview button.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
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.
Therefore Microsoft is not a monopoly? Ooh, I know this one. A-prioristic Randroid "reasoning." Your syllogism is missing a middle term.
And your epidermis is showing. ;-)
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
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
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
You do not understand basic economics. A monopoly can certainly occur without force due to, for example, economies of scale.
A good example of a natural monopoly is the market for electricity and water. A monopoly can most efficiently deliver these services, so a free market will result in a monopoly. No government involvement is needed for the monopoly to occur.
Government regulation _is_ needed, however, if electricity and water to be priced at economically efficient levels. A private monopoly will price electricity and water at the profit-maximizing level, which because of monopoly power is higher than the price should be from a social standpoint.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
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)
The fifth amendment protects a person under oath from incriminating himself, i.e. a right to remain silent. Microsoft didn't do anything of the kind; they lied in a court of law by presenting "evidence" of how much slower a IE-less Windows ran, and the prosecution proved and forced them to admit that the video was doctored. Self-incrimiation and trying to lie under oath are two very different things.
Also, I reject your fallacy of trying to redefine what I say as some sort of land analogy. I said nothing of the kind. See my reply in the cousin thread.
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.
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.
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.
Your post and extreme libertarian viewpoint (and that of the more ultra extreme version, the political anarchist), has a decidedly machavelian ring to it.
Let me preface by stating that I tend to agree with the core fundamental values of libertarianism; I believe a society is generally better off if the reach of the powerful, what it takes the form of restricting the lives of others, is as limited as possible. But, as many wiser than myself have noted throughout history: "All things in moderation"
The notion that any entity, individual or corporation, has some untennable right to use any and all means available in the quest for profit is based on a world-view that doesn't quite mesh with reality. Now, I don't believe you are saying something so extreme, right? I mean, presumably, you would be opposed to allowing a corporation to commit bodily harm as part of their "domination strategy." Assuming your viewpoint is at least that reasoned, what about less direct forms of manipulation (coercion)? Should a company, if capable, be permitted to "blacklist" employees of the competition; e.g. sully their names such that they find future employement difficult if their current employer becomes insolvent?
The point is that there must be a line drawn somewhere , if only because certain members of humanity have a weakness for exploiting others to the detriment of society. It is an overly-simplistic view which considers force to only exist at the end of a gun barrel; that's simply the most direct and final form of it.
If a company or individual has primary control over an essential supply chain, they have the ability to force distributors into exclusively using their product; simply by virtue of the fact that by severing the chain the distibutor will suffer economic disadvantage to the point of being unable to continue operations. This is exactly why we have anti-trust regulation. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with being a monopoly (depending on how you got that way), but the moment you start leverging that as a tool of force to combat existing or new competition, rather than competing on the merits of product alone, you have stepped over the line into societal antagonism.
In Massachussetts, what percentage of the people are using Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF, and what percentage of them are using software that support ODF?
So what you're saying is that because we use a closed format today we should use it tomorrow. And because we use it tomorrow we should use it the next day? And so on ad infinitum?
Sometimes you need to make a short term investment for long term gain. This is one of those times.
The same applies to any organisation with vendor lockin, on an upgrade train or lacking needed transparency.
---
Paid marketers are the worst zealots.
Think about it. Every medium size to large office with PCs is going to need IT people. I'm surprised they can handle a whole state with just 2000 people. You got DMVs and all those systems, State Troopers with laptops, state tax people, heath care services, the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and all their people, Attorney General, the lottery people, weights and measures. I could go on. Think about all the services that the state provides. Its huge. Needless to say its a lot of computers, networks, and people who probably are not too good at using them. This day in age where the most savy people are not using Microsoft, its important everyone can exchange information.
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!
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.
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.