The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is promoting a new IT policy that seems intended to exclude proprietary software products from state use.
The policy seems to go far beyond what is required to achieve the stated goals, and seems to have crossed over into a philosophical opposition to proprietary software. Perhaps it should be no surprise that the first U.S. state to fall to the “Commonists” would be Massachusetts . . .
The following is excerpted from a statement by Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, to Peter Quinn, chief information officer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (The full statement can be read in its entirety at www.ipblog.org)
Perhaps the most egregious element of the proposed policy is that it not only specifies that a software product must support a particular open format, but insists that this format must be the default formatin a particular company’s products. This insistence goes far beyond ensuring that Massachusetts agencies have the benefits of interoperability and standardization, and seems to be an attempt both to undermine a particular proprietary format, and also seems to be an attempt by a government to dictate the default format for the entire marketplace.
It strikes me that there is an enormous unnecessary cost to the Commonwealth if this policy is implemented, and I find no evidence from your website that any estimate has been performed as to the cost of this policy to the public or to state agencies.
The Commonwealth has already made an enormous investment in software licenses, and this investment will be wasted under this policy.
While industries have certainly found that there are certain software applications where open sourced or non-proprietary solutions can be economically justified, a recent Gartner Group report finds that there is no defensible return on investment (ROI) from switching from Microsoft office products to StarOffice or other open source options.
It would be interesting to know if the Commonwealth has conducted its own study that disagrees with this Gartner Group study.
Ask yourself: Which model of innovation first comes up with a bit of functionality, the “open” model or the proprietary model? Almost always, it is a proprietary company that introduces a new innovation, and then the “open” solutions try to find another way of delivering the same functionality. Why not work with those innovative companies, rather than ruling them out? There is no other conclusion from the proposed policy than that it is designed for the purpose of excluding proprietary products and formats.
Frankly, after studying the way the proposed policy has been crafted, and especially the way it has developed even after reaching agreements with Microsoft, the only reasonable conclusion is that the policy is being driven by an animosity against a particular company, or at least a philosophical attempt to strike a blow at the proprietary software development model and to favor alternative software development models. Is this the proper role for government? Is this what represents the best value for residents of the Commonwealth?