MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-11-02 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Massachusetts' CIO defends move to OpenDocument
|
I think a quick short note congratulating Ms. Hamel on her insightful choice
would not be amiss.
Additionally, here you can find her biography and additional information:
http://www.goscon.org/speaker_stuff/writeups/hamellinda
http://www.mass.gov/portal/site/massgovportal/menuitem.9b834fe2637831c14db4a
11030468a0c/?pageID=itdhomepage&L=1&L0=Home&sid=Aitd
Massachusetts' CIO defends move to OpenDocument
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci113
8949,00.html
By Jack Loftus News Writer
01 Nov 2005 | SearchOpenSource.com
BOSTON -- Open standards and open source software (OSS) got political on
Monday when Linda Hamel, the general counsel for the Massachusetts
Information Technology Department (ITD), suggested that groups that oppose
the OpenDocument file format standard might be influenced by Microsoft.
Hamel was testifying before the Senate's committee on Post Audit and
Oversight at a hearing regarding the state's switch to the OpenDocument file
format. Sen. Marc Pacheco, who is chairman of that committee, called the
hearing after reports indicated that Secretary of State William Galvin would
not support the switch.
"If we look at all the groups ... in most we are finding Microsoft funds
behind that group," Hamel said, although she did make the point to exclude
those groups that represented disabled government employees from her
criticism.
OpenDocument is a free file format for text, spreadsheets and presentations
created by OASIS, a consortium of companies like IBM and Sun Microsystems
that creates interoperable industry specifications based on public standards
such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Standard Generalized Markup
Language (SGML).
Massachusetts chose the OpenDocument standard instead of a proprietary
format like Microsoft's still-under-development Office Open XML.
Pacheco took exception to Hamel's remarks and first asked if she believed
these groups were in fact "wholly owned subsidiaries of Microsoft," before
asking if she believed they had been "bought" by the software giant.
"Those are your words, not mine senator," Hamel replied to both questions.
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has issued a statement that said
the move to OpenDocument would incur unnecessary costs as the state
government would be forced to convert "more than one million current files
to the new [OpenDocument] format."
However, an entry in the online FAQ on the Massachusetts Web site addressed
this complaint, stating that only those documents created after January 1,
2007, must be in the OpenDocument standard.
The proposed file format changes have also been panned by the National
Federation of the Blind in Computer Science. The organization's president,
Curtis Chong, told the Boston Globe in October that Microsoft had already
added features to its Office product that allowed the software to interact
with Braille printers and screen-reader programs that speak the text on a
computer screen.
In response to those concerns, Peter Quinn, Massachusetts Information
Technology Division [ITD], chief information officer explained those workers
would continue to use Microsoft Office while colleagues move to a different
brand of software.
"Adopting the [OpenDocument] standard does not mean we will have to abandon
our commitment to existing legacy systems," Quinn said. He added the legacy
systems would be maintained until a cost-effective alternative is available
in the future.
Even as Quinn and Hamel sought to clarify their department's position on
OpenDocument, Pacheco said there were still public concerns about users with
disabilities and total cost of ownership.
Pacheco said it appeared that no cost analysis had been done before ITD
committed to OpenDocument, and that the agency had moved forward
unilaterally without input from other agencies.
Cote criticized the planned move to what he described as questionable,
untested and unreliable technology, and urged the committee to reject the
standard.
"The policy was changing before my eyes; it started as open source then
became OpenDocument," he said.
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