“I’m presiding over the dismantling of an IT investment program–over a decade in the evolution–that the legislature leadership appears unwilling to salvage at this time,” Gutierrez wrote.
TRANSLATION: This is a prime example of how effective the Romney-Healey Administration is in dealing with the legislature. Romney is jetting around the country to busy to deal with such small details that may put at risk millions of dollars of critical state IT infrastructure. Do you think Healey could pick up a little bit of the slack? No way, Healey was spent all her time lobbying for “get tough” laws that were going to pass anyway, instead of watching out for the taxpayer’s purse.
In his letter, Gutierrez said the state is “dismantling” its information technology investment program and that ongoing projects will need to be shut down and restarted at great costs.
This is a win-win for Romney-Healey. He gets to bash the legislature and his Republican contractors get to charge extra for de-mobilization and re-mobilization costs on contracts across state government.
Gutierrez succeeded Peter Quinn, who resigned in late 2005 saying that technology decisions, notably the OpenDocument policy, had become too politicized.
TRANSLATION: Romney’s Presidential run has turned the management of state government upside down. Whatever is good for the presidential aspirations of Romney gets top priority no matter if it makes sense for Massachusetts. Headlines because Massachsetts is dumping Microsoft? No problem. Do it. Instead of focusing of critical state IT infrastructure, Quinn hit the buzzsaw of Microsoft and was forced out.
Louis Gutierrez is highly respected in the private IT sector. He had quite a bit to do with the successful turnaround of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. This is a loss for the Commonwealth.
Except I think that the ODF plan is really a great step forward, irrelevant of what administration initiated it. By avoiding the stranglehold of Microsoft on our IT, we make the persistence of state records and ability to serve much more viable long term.
ODF would be a great step forward, and the issue has become politicized (thanks in part to the efforts of SoS W. Galvin). I doubt there are many legislators who understand the technical points either of ODF or Microsoft proponents. This is a decision that should have been made by the CIO.
Vicious and misinformed at the same time. For the record, I am an unenrolled voter who tends to go Democrat.
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Louis Gutierrez