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Peter Quinn Explains his Resignation
JSBiff writes "Peter Quinn, former CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has given an interview to Pamela Jones over at Groklaw, regarding the people, companies, and events surrounding his resignation. He spins an interesting tale of Microsoft, money, and the politics of technology." From the article: "Now the folks that have say here do not know me from a hole in the wall and the funds were for projects that were totally unrelated to ITD. I clearly had set the priorities for the Bond but this funding is for projects like a new Taxpayers System, new Registry of Motor Vehicles system, etc., all projects desperately needed by the citizens of the Commonwealth. Eric Kriss and I always had a goal of making IT 'a'political and now it was rapidily becoming a political football of the highest magnitude. I took this job in the hopes of making meaningful and institutionalized IT reform. All the previous efforts were about to be for naught as political payback." We discussed Quinn's resignation last month.
I'm shocked that politics is involved in government decisions. Shocked!
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The key is to have the government do as little as possible. Then you can make your decisions, and I can make mine. When you decide for yourself, it's a personal question, not a political one. When the government decides, it's always going to be political.
This is the same issue as "decency" filters on (government) library computers. Politics decided that one too.
The only way everyone gets what they want is by taking it out of government hands.
He specifically avoided making any requirements on documents submitted to his department. The policy explicitly states that you can use whatever you want, and they'll do their best to deal with it. His mandate included making recommendations for what people in general use, and he decided that the correct thing to do was to tell people to continue using the software and formats they were already using. The policy only applies to the documents the executive department produces, and says that they should be in a standard format, not whatever the person preparing them feels like.
If you really want the choice of what format documents are in, why don't you demand that Slashdot post their stories in DOC format, too? Slashdot is forcing you to use HTML right now.
For that matter, the normal thing will be for them to use ODF documents internally, but send out PDFs, since they aren't trying to make the documents they publish easy to edit. So use you be complaining that Slashdot's back end doesn't store their stories in DOC.
Quoting original poster: "Now, given a choice between paying annually for a new revision of MS Office, and paying a competent Unix/Linux IT guy to administer a bunch of Linux desktops, I'd vote for the latter. I'm thinking I'd get more for my tax dollar."
Cost of software is an issue, and certainly an important one.
More important, however, is accessibility and usability of government records. If important data and memos about an issue of today are locked up in a proprietary format which almost certainly won't be completely readable by the then current version of Office software in 2020 and beyond, then this is a real loss for all concerned! Moreover, citizens shouldn't have to own and use a particular piece of commercial software to be able to read documents which their own government produces. That's just plain wrong if there are simple and straightforward alternatives.
First, OpenOffice's support of Microsoft Word documents is not perfect, and it never will be because Microsoft will ensure they never have enough information to make it perfect. And that matters. I get Microsoft Word forms reasonably often, and OpenOffice doesn't really handle them all that well. And, there are a number of word processing programs (Abiword being an example) that handle Microsoft Word documents very poorly but handle ODF just fine. So, really, it was increasing choice, not decreasing it.
HTML and CSV are completely inadequate for office documents. HTML is an mediocre display format, and a lousy format for editing.
The question is, who owns the data? When the data is in a Microsoft proprietary format, Microsoft effectively owns the data. You either stay locked in the past forever (not really an option) or pay Microsoft whatever they ask for new software and the ability to read your old data.
It is beyond unacceptable for a government to be in this position. It basically sacrifices sovereignty to Microsoft. What law will Microsoft demand as a price for an upgrade? How much will people have to pay Microsoft in order to send the government a document their software can understand?
Already the deleterious effect of giving Microsoft so much control can be felt in the enormous political wrangling over this. Microsoft has been able to effectively force this guy to resign. It's utterly ridiculous.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It contains reverse engineered support, which is imperfect and can be yanked out at any time by one law from congress. Or by MS deciding to put an encryption on next years data model (making reverse engineering a DMCA violation).
Because the rule forces the *government* to release all documents in the ODF format. Previously, the government released it in any format it chose, which most likely was MS Office. Meaning if you don't shell out money for office, you won't be able to read governemnt forms and documents. The state of Massachusettes was forcing people to buy MS products in order to interact with it. Since ODF is a free format (as in beer), that means ANYONE with a computer can now open government documents, where previously only people who bought MS software could. This is the way things should be- government documents should be open to ALL citizens.
If you wish to use MS products, you still can- either convince MS to support ODF, or convert the ODF files to
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I'm definitely for the guy. He states it plainly that MS uses its legislative influence to try to derail any plans that would decrease the overall revenue stream of MS.
Maybe the Globe should be investigating those representatives, senators and general officers that tried to kill ODF. But they won't. Money talks and bullshit walks.
How can he feign outrage that politics became involved?
You don't understand Government.
The greatest aspect, and greatest failure of our form of Democratic government is that ostensibly, government employees should be apolitical. Elected officials are political; appointed officials and government employees/workers are NOT political.
Some people even actually try to hold to this; the opposite of this, politics among the beauracrats is the purest definition of "corruption".
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell