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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.
He wasn't forcing you to use OO. He was forcing you to use Open Document Format, a format agreed on by *multiple* word processor companies that is royalty free and usable by any company who wishes to implement it, no hooks. That includes MS, should they so choose. This would change the current system, where only people who buy MS software are ensured of interoperability with government published documents. In other words, he was *increasing* choice, not decreasing it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I applaud Quinn for trying to straighten out the IT mess that is state government. There may come a time where professional competence trumps political maneuvering here, but apparently, that time is still far in the future.
It seems to this user that the pace of Microsoft releases is increasing (to once a year), and support time for the older formats is decreasing. While I understand that it might be fun to embed Java objects and streaming voice and video in Word documents, it really has no relevence to me, and I doubt to many (most?) users. Certainly not at the state government level, where tables, charts and images are about all you need, and these were handled perfectly well in Word'97 (as they are in OpenOffice). 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.
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.
It seems that Quinn was the person that wanted to introduce open document formats in Mass. What happened is that certain senators started cutting the MASS IT budget to the point where the MASS government could not spend anything on IT unless they got the ok of a special commission of senators.
Quinn felt sure that he was the reason the senators were cutting the IT budget. He felt that the whole state was being punished because of him. He believes that the state urgently needs new computer systems to take care of their records (these systems being completely unrelated to the open document controversy) and they will not get them because the senate is cutting the budget.
Since he did not want to see the state and his colleagues in IT getting screwed because of him, he decided to quit.
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.
> He wasn't forcing you to use OO. He was forcing you to use Open Document Format
Actually, he wasn't trying to force YOU to use anything! He was trying to force the Mass. gov't to use open, cross-platform, multi-vendor formats for their public documents! (Note the plural in "formats"--pdf and html are also on the list.) Private citizens creating their own documents would be free to continue using XYWrite or VisiCalc or whatever other stupid, proprietary formats they want their data to become obsolete in.
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
Years ago there was a confrontation with my school district and the state involving contracts for Mac computers. We had always had Macs in the library, computer lab, and classrooms. When it came time to buy new computers, consultants advised our school to get PC's, as most students coud not bring projects home from the Mac lab to their PC. The state reps got rather angry, stating the amount of money they recieve from Apple, and the great discounts they get. The PC switch went ahead anyway... with a few bucks going to a separate Mac computer lab.
End result? The PC's the district could afford were outdated before they even arrived, unable to efficiently run even OEM programs provided with them. The Mac lab had few computers and a separate network, and were the only boxes that could run the grade tracking software (provided and required by the state), so the teachers were frequently on them. So hearing that good old MA (48th ranked state in School technology integration at the time of that incedent) is backwards on IT again. Hopefully within a decade or so my town records won't just be in paper form anymore.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
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
From a government records manager and archivist point of view, his stance makes sense. Archives must be accessible in the future. Proprietrary formats are anathemas to government records and archives.
You might find this Globe article interesting:9 /senators_question_file_storage_shift/
... The Romney administration wants documents stored in a particular format that would allow the records to be read by a variety of software packages -- except Microsoft Office." Smells like FUD in the presentation to me.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/10/2
I can't tell you for sure who the Senators were that cut funding to Quinn's unrelated IT projects, but I've got a good suspect.
The two people who are mentioned as being probably against the ODF move are one Senator Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton, chairman of the Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee, and Secretary of State William F. Galvin.
For those who don't want to read the linked article, it's nominally about some manufactured controversy over whether ODF would work with accessibility addons (Braille terminals, screenreaders, etc.) as well as MS Word does. Personally I find this ironic, because I know one blind person who says that the GUI was the worst thing that ever happened to sightless-accessibility in computing; interacting with a command prompt using a Braille terminal ain't no thing, but using a screenreader can be a real pain by comparison.
In my mind the article is pretty well biased against ODF: it opens by saying "Massachusetts lawmakers are questioning an effort by the Romney administration that could jettison Microsoft's popular Office software from thousands of state computers.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."