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.

Comments

Re:For or Against?

[AuMatar]

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.

As a citizen of Massachusetts

[Peter Simpson]

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.

For those of you too lazy to read the TFA

[Edmund Blackadder]

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.

Re:For or Against?

[Omnifarious]

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.