A closed door (for now) on open standards

Seems Massachusetts' Peter Quinn got the wrong side of a slammed door for his troubles to open state IT wide open - "open standards, open documents, open-source software." Governing magazine's May 2006 issue reports on the tribulations and resignation of Mass. CIO, Peter Quinn. FR reported last year of the excitement in public, state and IT circles to Massachusetts' embrace of open standards. However, that turned out to be more the thrown gauntlet.

Government's responsibility is to keep its information open and unimpeded, not only today but also tomorrow.

Not quite the last words in the ensuing battle to be open, but no longer issuing as state policy. Governing reports of the efforts, soon after Mr. Quinn's public support of open standards, by lobbyists supportive of Microsoft and by legislators concerned with Mr. Quinn's management vision and tactics, as well as of a press attack on his ethics. His decisions denounced by a Senate audit committee, his vision accused as being "unworkable," and questioned by the press of improper use of travel expenses (later retracted), Mr. Quinn resigned.

Microsoft products are used on 90 percent of the desktops in Massachusetts government, all based on proprietary software code.

"They're not the 900-pound gorilla, they're the 1,800-pound gorilla in this marketplace," says John Weathersby, executive director of the Open Source Software Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes adoption of open technology in government. "They own the desktop space. They're going to fight against it tooth and nail, and I expect nothing less."

Read the Governing article:
Open Sorcerer A crusade for open standards in technology cost one top official his job in Massachusetts. But the issue isn't going away.

also, the online special face-off between Peter Quinn and Microsoft's Alan Yates:
Open Standards: a Face-off