FOSS case study — Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Peter Quinn, ex CIO commonwealth of Massachusetts, reports on the his state’s decision to use an open standard document format for office productivity documents.90000 employees700m US$ IT spendingChallenges:Budget crisis at the end of 2002. Demographics of state employees 40-60 years old, which means high expected turnover in the next few years.Massive legacy systems.”If someone made one and someone sold one, we bought it”95% of IT employees unionised.
We are at the City of Cologne for a FLOSSWORLD workshop, organised by Rishab Gosh, project leader from UNU-MERIT. One of the participants is Peter Quinn ex-CIO of the State of Massachusetts, who recently resigned amidst the controversy (and some personal attacks) around the use of Open Document Format by his state government.