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.

Despite the globe article

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the globe articles making it seem like he resigned for bring a crook, this story is a very very interesting one about the power of money / lobbey in politics.

You had comittees and senators and groups who had never paid attention for a second to this space going absolutely crazy about it. One of the hearings it was quinn and his lawyer and like 8 people opposed to him.

Also, politics is irrational. They proposed doing things they had lectured people not to do before.

I suspect it drives out good folks (federall and national) when you get so much political influence, and all that are left in beuracracies are real beauracrats, who just want the job.

Facinating.

Re:For or Against?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the guy has good intentions but it also seems like he enjoys being a Linux celebrity a little too much. He'd be able to accomplish a lot more as the CIO of Massachusetts than as a martyr, adulation from the delusional teenage fanboys at Groklaw notwithstanding.

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.

MASS IT priorities

[kevin.fowler]

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.

Re:Shocked

[elpapacito]

The key is helping you find your brain. The dude was looking after an OPEN standard that would have given you MORE choice..as opposed to a M$ Library or M$ Swimming Pool or M$ Anything that you can damn be sure will be closed source, close standard.

Only a government as a weight big enough to impose OPEN standard without actually forcing anybody to lose money..but hey, your corrupt representative keep getting lobby money to fuck up anything that benefits the masses.

They key is corrupt politicians, not government where government does same or better then privates.

Which Senators?

[namespan]

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.

Does anyone know which Senators? I'd say they're prime candidates for replacement next election cycle, if not actually being taken to with pitchfork, torch, tar, and feather.

Re:Which Senators?

[Kadin2048]

You might find this Globe article interesting:
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/10/29 /senators_question_file_storage_shift/ [boston.com]

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. ... 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.