Mass. Names New CIO; Affirms OpenDocuments Policy
The Bay State has named Louis Gutierrez to fill
the position of chief information officer at the state's Information Technology
Division and, at the same time, reiterated its support for a previously
announced plan to implement the OpenDocument format in state agencies in January
2007.
The Massachusetts state government has named Louis Gutierrez to fill the position of chief information officer at the state’s Information Technology Division and, at the same time, reiterated its support for the state’s plan to implement the OpenDocument format in state agencies in January 2007.
A battle between supporters of Microsoft’s XML format and ODF led by IBM and Sun Microsystems convulsed the state’s IT operation for months, as both sides courted Massachusetts politicians.
In naming Gutierrez, currently chief technology strategist at UMass Medical School, the administration of Governor Mitt Romney appointed a CIO with a demonstrated commitment to open standards.
“Gutierrez will be responsible for overseeing the final stages of implementation of the state’s new Open Document format proposal, to go into effect in January 2007,” the state’s announcement said, signaling that Massachusetts remains committed to ODF. Over the past several months, the administration and politicians of both major political parties have batted the ODF-Microsoft debate back-and-forth.
We spent some time with this in earlier discussion — when the initiator of OpenDocs left after the political hammering he took. Nice to see the state stick to their guns.
Posted: Wed - February 1, 2006 at 06:52 AM