Technology adviser quits amid new data format initiative
BOSTON –Gov. Mitt Romney’s technology
adviser resigned, saying he had become a “lightning rod” because of
his leadership in moving to an open data format for storing the state’s
electronic documents.
The state government official who had been moving Massachusetts away from Microsoft Corp.’s digital document formats has resigned. Peter Quinn, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, will quit his position, effective Jan. 9, according to an internal memo obtained by the IDG News Service.
Quinn had been behind a drive to change state computers so that they would no longer store documents in proprietary formats such as those used by Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes. Under a proposal drafted by Quinn’s Information Technology Division (ITD), in 2007, the state would begin a move to the OpenDocument file format, an open, XML-based format used by a variety of products including IBM Workplace and StarOffice.
By championing the move away from Microsoft, Quinn became a hero to the open-source community, but he also attracted a level of public scrutiny that disrupted his private and professional life. That attention played a role in his resignation, according to the memo.
I remember when the Boston GLOBE was a world-class newspaper. Not since it was sold.
Posted: Thu - December 29, 2005 at 05:46 AM