PlexNex

My Comment on Mass ITD's ETRM 4.0

Public comments ended last Friday. Here's what I submitted...

Dear Ms Pepoli-

I urge you to review and change the ETRM 4.0 policy from ODF + OOXML back to ODF-only.

It is morally and pragmatically detrimental to the citizens of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts (of which group I am now proudly a member) to have Microsoft's proprietary XML formats (which subsume the few benefits of XML in onerous lock-in mechanisms) included in the state's procurement policy.

It is my informed belief that accepting both formats will produce WORSE software constipation at all levels of use than we have ever experienced before.

While ODF is proving difficult to implement on a practical basis (and you & I know precisely how this is so), developments in the open standards field will in time stimulate a deployable solution. (As you know, solutions have already been identified.) If The Commonwealth feels the frictions of deployment particularly acutely now it's because The Commonwealth was and remains first to challenge the issue. The ITD pilot alone will have saved other organizations millions, since they no longer need to repeat the work -- this is part of the progress we all make together.

Adhering firmly to the confidence of earlier convictions by changing back ETRM 4.0 to ODF-only will accelerate the changes necessary to make ODF the freely deployable solution to a workable XML document format future for the Commonwealth.

You can be assured in this rapidly changing field of technology that your decision will influence many important decisions by your counterparts across the nation and the world which will reinforce a decision in this case based upon moral & practical principles.

Sincerely,

Sam Hiser
[address omitted]

The Inevitability of the Universal, Portable Document Format

Shane Peterson does a superb & accurate chronological overview of the ODF situation in the CommonWealth of Massachusetts in Government Technology online.

In addition to its successful synthesis of the timeline and the grasp you get of why the Commonwealth is doing this, and how this poor company, Microsoft, is struggling to catch up, what stands out from this piece is the sense of confidence in the inevitability of the universal, portable document. The Commonwealth Executive Branch CIO, Louis Gutierrez, has it; and many members of the ODF community have it, but it is rare to see this confidence reflected in the press -- who have been very reluctant to see the common sense in a trend which would destablilize the status quo, and shake-up lazy-minds.

In the piece, Louis Gutierrez highlights the message of Gary Edwards, President & Founder of the OpenDocument Foundation, Inc., 501(c)3  [the author is an officer of <ODf/>]...

"The standard is about the format, not the application versus application," he said. "It's really a pointer toward something that Gary Edwards [founder and president of the OpenDocument Foundation] is very compelling in his discussion of -- we are heading toward a document-centric world and moving away from an application-centric world. It's going to be much more important how we structure, store and have workflow with standardized document forms than whether I'm using this or that version of this or that office productivity app."

CIO Gutierrez hits the fundamental points...

"You look at this and you say, 'Right now, we all rely on the Internet with its TCP/IP standard, and, boy, it's just like running water,'" he said. "That wasn't always the case, and in the early days, we used to wander around with different networking schemes, topologies and means of trafficking over the wire. Now we've come to a standard. It's not a vendor-specific standard, and it just works."

"The direction of this standard is almost self-evident," he said. "It really is compellingly useful and interesting to have governments start to traffic in open, standardized, XML-based document formats.

"To the extent we think of this as enabling the documents, that any given person at their desk saves, to better interoperate in broad-scale workflow, archiving and indexing -- that's when things get exciting and interesting," Gutierrez continued. "That's really the ultimate play here."

I'll reiterate: "The direction of this standard is almost self-evident."

Yet the process of getting state government to recognize the opportunity is slow. Minnesota is pursuing an open file format legislation initiative. Peterson quotes Minnesota State Representative, Paul Thissen, who introduced the legislation (HF 3971)...

"People, generally, in government have vague ideas of what open standards and open source are, but they don't understand specifically what the implications of those things are," Thissen said. "An education piece is important, which is part of the reason we wanted to raise it this year, and we're doing some work with local newspapers as well to write opinion pieces to educate the general public on how important this is."

So the persistent education about what just happened in Massachusetts will be ongoing -- and redundant in at least 49 discrete instances -- before the new new thing becomes the most widely agreed safe choice.

One False Message, Among So Many

Today you will read the Commonwealth Governor's mid-year assessment on ODF. (Here is Martin Lamonica's (c|net) preview yesterday.) This assertive declaration for ODF will prove that at least one of Microsoft's FUD messaging points has been ill-conceived in that company's Lab of Disinformation with intent to confuse state legislators and the general public.

You will note that Mass ITD has stuck with its ODF policy (first espoused in the wide-ranging ETRM 3.5 policy document) and corrected the earlier disconnect with the disability community.

What is not directly obvious -- but self-evident -- is that ITD's policy is and always was a policy for open standards that would help the Executive Department gradually move its ICT architecture toward a modular Services Oriented Architecture ("SOA") design. The policy was decidedly not directed at software applications (and therefore it was not a policy that is malicious toward a particular software license model, nor was it a policy to hinder a particular software vendor). 

The office document file format was one of many open standards highlighted in ETRM 3.5 and, because the policy implies disruption of a key Microsoft control-point on all its customers (the document file formats), this caused Microsoft much anxiety (due to the assumption of malice) and prompted intense lobbying in the Commowealth -- despite the fact that Microsoft was always encouraged to be the provider of ODF capabilities (and still has an open invitation to participate on the ODF technical committees at ODF's development consortium, OASIS). The most prominent efforts to stall and change the policy came directly under the bright golden dome on Beacon Hill immediately after ETRM 3.5 was finalized and ratified in late September, 2005.

Among the points of Microsoft's messaging script then was the idea that government policy should not use software business model to pre-emptively, unfairly, distinguish among software procurement choices.

This point was clearly stated in a December 14, 2005 speech by Microsoft's Alan Yates in the Commonwealth Senate chambers...

Next, public policy shouldn't necessarily favor one business model over another. Commercial software can be quite, quite, quite open, just as Open Source software can be quite open. They're simply different business models. One business model relies more on the magic of software, if you will, and one business model relies more on the magic of services, if you will, gluing disparate parts together through professional services to make it all work together. Two different business models.

Microsoft's Alan Yates | Groklaw (from transcript)

The point contains an insidious inherent assumption -- like the famous question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" The inherent assumption is that ETRM 3.5 and the intent of the policy was to create a preference for open source solutions in Massachusetts state government IT procurement and to exclude Microsoft as a vendor of proprietary solutions. That self-centered assumption missed the point entirely.

Exclusion of Microsoft is decidedly not the case, as today's mid-year assessment of ODF will indicate. Mass ITD has found the open source alternative office suite software applications which are ODF-ready to be wanting in their ability to smoothly replace Microsoft Office in the business processes of the state. ITD is opting instead for the interim solution of a Plug-in. This action defies Microsoft's misanthropic assumption -- perpetuated in the media and impossible to erase from almost everyone's mind -- that the Governor's IT department was gunning for Microsoft's head.

Instead, the ODF Plug-in can be interpreted to be a generous gift to Microsoft to extend the life of the software it has sold.

The ODF Plug-in -- by inserting ODF capabilities seemlessly and natively into existing software -- will extend the useful life of MS Office installations in the Commonwealth; the ODF Plug-in will increase the ROI of a significant portion of the Commonwealth's desktop software investment; the ODF Plug-in will preserve existing business processes in the Commonwealth while introducing the wonderful XML data markup standard -- which Microsoft supports whole-heartedly; and significantly  the ODF Plug-in will preserve the special workflow processes of disabled PC users in the Commonwealth to give time for alternative software products to compete fairly in all kinds of Assistive Technologies that will integrate with the common PC.

Unequivocally, Microsoft's expedient & disingenuous point about business model preferences is shown false in its fundamental assumption as the Governor's IT department has elected to keep its proprietry software in order to fulfill ETRM 3.5 responsibly for the benefit of citizens in government and across the Commonwealth.

Plugin Prompts Torrent of FUD

Disability groups in Massachusetts and Microsoft's army of lobbyists and its network of disinformation agents have sparked up a new round of FUD against The Commonwealth's ETRM 3.5 open standards policy.

Microsoft is scared shitless of The Plugin, a piece of software that will install on Windows and with MS Office to enable MS Office to work with files in the OpenDocument format. The Commonwealth last week issued a Request For Information to find out if any such software exists (this is customary procurement policy to ensure all vendors participate), and there was at least one interesting response in the affirmative from The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. 501(c)3 (of which this author is a member).

So far, the FUD contains the same old factual errors we saw spreading around last Fall which are comical in their lack of depth but difficult to set right in the public mind: confusing open source with open standards; confusing standards policy with procurement policy; and setting up a negative framing of the issues.

Bob Sutor does a great job addressing one piece of FUD in particular from The Initiative for Software Choice -- another Microsoft-sponsored Astroturf organization. As the name suggests, The Initiative for Software Choice is about keeping choice AWAY from software markets.

Yeah. There's just no way to posit with any sense of self-worth that ETRM 3.5 is a pro-open source policy. It's an open standards policy; and Microsoft HATES those when they interfere with the company's control of markets its control over household and enterprise budget decisions which always flow into their avaricious, gaping and drooling mouths. Hell hath no fury like a corrupt corporation scorned.

Gutierrez' First Day

Louis Gutierrez, the new CIO of Governor Romney's Executive Branch (Massachusetts), takes over today. Notably, Mr Gutierrez and the Romney Administration took pains to emphasize his commitment to finishing off the implementation of the OpenDocument and other policies initiated by ex-CIO, Peter Quinn & the ITD team. Interim CIO, Bethann Pepoli, returns to the important Deputy CIO role alongside Mr Gutierrez.

Lisa Vaas, in her Jan. 21st piece for eWeek, emphasized the politics correctly. This new phase of As the File Format Turns in The Commonwealth is principally about the Governor sticking with his people and the sound principles espoused in ETRM 3.5, the policy for SOA throughout the Executive Branch which declares numerous open standard targets and go-live dates, including those relating to OpenDocument. Andy Updegrove makes several worthwhile shades of the point in Lisa's piece that strength on ODF is already benefiting the Romney Presidential bid. And coming from UMass, Gutierrez is undoubtedly Romney's man.

In the scheme of The Commonwealth's IT history and its present challenges, Mr Gutierrez is a Batman, Superman, Shane & Dirty Harry figure in one. Home-grown Harvard & MIT credentials say "no shrinking violet." But his public and private sector IT leadership record reflects a strong streak of common sense, people skills, public service and an intense commitment to open standards. In a word, this guy oozes competence and looks a fair punt to run the IT systems of the United States of America and possessions. (That may mean Peter Quinn gets his pick of State, Commerce, NSA, FBI, Homeland or Langley.)

Chief Technology Strategist, UMass Medical School
Coordinated the IT behind "Helping Hand," Massachusetts' effort to assist New Orleanians during Katrina.

CIO, Mass Health & Human Services
Established the "Virtual Gateway," unifying 16 agencies with open standards, like the Internet!

CIO, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare
Turnaround: attacked broken business processes, not just FUBAR claims processing systems.

Gutierrez also held this position of CIO of The Commonwealth's Executive Branch before.

The succession of Louis Gutierrez is not a milquetoast move by Romney. Microsoft and its tassle-loafer dandies will take a memo here: ETRM 3.5 is not a picayune attack on their company. It is not even about Microsoft. It's about a strong set of principles with much wider scope and positive economic and, yes, social impact in more languages and far-flung places than a single company can reach. Microsoft executives, members of the MrSofty Board of Directors as well as investors in the Common Stock need to ask themselves one thing: "Do you feel lucky?..."

Bob Sutor kindly consolidates the media coverage of the Gutierrez appointment.

Educating Coursey

Groklaw calmly takes on David Coursey's last fatuous opinion piece with points from the Massachusetts ETRM 3.5 policy FAQ. Leaving no intentional error unaddressed, Groklaw highlights the most telling evidence that David Coursey is being compensated under the table by Microsoft:

Finally, Coursey states something rather odd, and it's precisely here that Microsoft's  train runs off the rails:

[Coursey:] Microsoft is here, and as the overwhelming choice of customers, it gets to make certain decisions, file formats being one of them

First, the thing about being a monopoly is that people lack a choice, so it's a stretch to say people have chosen it. Try to buy a computer without Microsoft's operating system. Second, Microsoft doesn't get to tell governments what file formats to use. Coursey asks on what authority Quinn chose a file format for government use in executive agencies. There is statutory authority for that, actually, as the FAQ showed. But Microsoft has no such authority, and it's extraordinary that anyone would suggest that one of the perks of being a monopolist is that you get to tell governments what to do and what file formats to use. Has Microsoft forgotten who works for whom?

I want to affirm that such an opinion expressed by David Coursey here is impossible -- either to hold or to advance -- because it is too flagrantly stupid & self-contradictory. It cannot be possible for an individual -- particularly a tech journalist who reads the news day to day, who was ostensibly educated in the United States -- to believe that a company gets to decide something as fundamental as the file format for a government. Or that dominance comes first and proprietary file formats second.

To pretend to believe this is the height of corruption, and I would not pretend to slander David Coursey without good evidence that he is corrupt. It is one thing to be paid for opinions: there are whole industries for that -- of which mine (Advisory) is a part. It is another to be paid for opinions that couldn't possibly be true, that the opinion-sayer does not himself believe, and which do real harm to the ecomomy and to individuals the world over. (This I declare the very week that Bill & Melinda Gates are featured on the cover of Time Magazine, which is the most interesting contrast I have honestly seen in recent days or ranking with the best ever in my lifetime. Not unlike the photograph of the "Whites Only" sign over the WC at a Ku Klux Klan meeting hall.)

David Coursey is a garden-variety Microsoft Astroturfer, aspiring but inadequate to the mold of Jack Abramoff. Coursey is the lowest life-form in Microsoft's custom-built, made-to-order disinformation food chain. 

See my comment on more funded opinions from the Smug Pundit.