What did state legislators have to say about the open standard?
State Senator Michael Morrissey doesn t know me from a hole in the wall, and doesn t know much about IT. He filed the amendment that essentially guts the office of the CIO, and its ability to set standards and procurement. It hasn t passed yet. If you sat through any of the testimony, especially at informational hearings, legislators just truly do not understand the importance of having a standard in terms of history. We have no digital archives in the state. History is being created at an unprecedented rate, and lost at unprecedented rate. We were of the mindset that this was the correct thing to do for the public, for government, and for future generations. I never thought people would make this personal, which they clearly did. All of a sudden I became a lightning rod for everything that is IT. Why were you so scary? There s no other way to say this: The near-monopoly in the commonwealth in terms of desktop software is Microsoft. They have an excellent lobbying organization. I have
