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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."
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.
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/korn/LargePrintWe blog/20051113
I'm not fat, just big boned...
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.
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 have several options...
On Windows you can use the free Foxit PDF reader, which allows you to write text overlayed on PDFs, and allows you to print the results. I would suggest printing to file, with any postscript (PS) print driver, then convert to PDF with ghostscript, ps2pdf.com, acrobat distiller, etc.
On Unix or Windows, you can open PDFs using GIMP, and add in text like you would with any image. Then you can convert the images to a big PDF document if you like.
Personally, I would use something like pdf2html (requires ghostscript), and edit the resulting HTML document. From there you can decide if you want to return it as HTML, or convert it back into PDF.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's certainly not a principle of the American federal system. The state is the unit of sovereignty, historically speaking - power flows to local governments from the state, not to the state from local governments as you assert. Municipalities have as much or as little legal authority as the state grants them - no more and no less. In that light, this move is perfectly in accord with American traditions of federalism - the state of Massachusetts is simply retaking a power it almost certainly granted to local governments in the first place.
This should not be construed as an argument that it's necessarily a wise move, merely that the principles of federalism are not somehow discordant with it. You can certainly also argue that power should flow the way you wish it to, from the bottom up, but that's definitely not how it is now, nor is that how it's ever been.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
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.
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!
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.