Open Document 'Violates State Law'
Open Document 'Violates State Law'
July 3rd, 2006: The soap opera that is the Massachusetts state Information Technology Division rolls on with a senatorial committee slamming the decision to use Open Document.
The Senate Report 2612 is entitled "Open Standards, Closed Government - ITD's Deliberate Disregard for Public Process" - a damning enough indictment in itself. It covers ground as diverse as vendor lock-out, disability access, and just which government department actually has the power to invoke standards for documents and records management.
Alan Cote, Supervisor of Public Records, also made his department's position clear, stating: "The rigid policy, such as the initiative before you that excludes any vendor or any process and relies on questionable, untested and unreliable practices or tools, does not suit the commonwealth well. It may very well result in many electronic records being lost or destroyed".
The first paragraph of the executive summary builds on this damning tone: "On August 29, 2005, the state's Information Technology Division ("ITD") issued a proposal to make sweeping changes to the state's information technology infrastructure. The proposal, called the Enterprise Technical Reference Manual ("ETRM") includes a provision that would make Massachusetts the first state in the country to require that all executive branch agencies use open standards for government documents. Open standards is a policy that increases interoperability of electronic documents and eliminates restrictive licensing agreements. The Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight ("Committee"), with the mandate to review state agency operations, reviewed the process by which ITD developed the ETRM. The Committee found that ITD was not aware of the cost of the ETRM, the impact it could have on the state's public records, limitations on IT accessibility for persons with disabilities, that the agency excluded key governmental and advocacy groups, and that the proposal was issued in violation of state law."
This diatribe is given further voice by the key findings within the report:
1. ITD released the ETRM despite public testimony that the OpenDocument Format ("ODF"), an ITD approved open standard, may impair IT accessibility for thousands of workers with disabilities. ITD, the Massachusetts Office on Disability and advocates from the disability community testified that the ODF may not be compatible with assistive technology, such as screen readers and voice recognition software, required by persons with disabilities.
2. After seven months of negotiations, the Information Technology Division still has not completed a Memorandum of Understanding between state agencies and the Massachusetts Office on Disability to ensure accessibility of IT applications.
3. The Committee learned that the state has had a history of accessibility problems with IT applications, including the state's human services website and the state's main website, Mass.gov.
4. ITD did not conduct a cost analysis or develop implementation documents prior to issuing the ETRM, a new statewide IT framework for 80,000 end users in the executive branch.
5. ITD did not have the statutory authority to issue provisions in the ETRM relating to public records management. The Secretary of the Commonwealth and the Records Conservation Board both have jurisdiction over public records in Massachusetts and did not approve the ETRM as required by Massachusetts statute.
6. ITD did not collaborate with other state entities involved in IT and public records policy. During the development of the ETRM, which affects all executive branch agencies and employees, ITD cancelled nine out of ten monthly meetings of state agency Chief Information Officers and relied instead on a small working group of government technologists. ITD never presented the ETRM to the IT Advisory Board, an entity which was created to ensure a cohesive government IT strategy.
7. The exclusionary development process of the ETRM was initiated and led by former Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss and former ITD Director Peter Quinn. Although significant work remains, the new ITD Director and Administration and Finance Secretary have taken measures to improve collaboration and to address the accessibility concerns of the disability community.
In short, ITD's decision - which could have seen Open Document and its related, non-Microsoft - applications has been stopped in its tracks. As the Massachusetts initiative is widely viewed as a proving ground for a system of records management that would indeed have changed purchasing, implementation and access radically, this has to be seen as watershed.