October 4th, 2006
Another Massachusetts CIO bites the dust (that's two down in a year)
The chief information officer of Massachusetts is stepping down, complaining about a lack of funding for the commonwealth's technology initiatives.
Louis Gutierrez on Tuesday sent his letter of resignation to the state's secretary of administration and finance, Thomas Trimarco. The letter blasts the state for halting spending on ongoing projects.
"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.
His departure, effective in 30 days, will not derail the state's policy of adopting OpenDocument as the state's default document format, said Felix Browne, a spokesman for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
I can't help but wonder if there's more (politically speaking) to this story than meets the eye. Just because Romney's office is pushing forward with the decision to go with the OpenDocument Format for the storage and retrieval of productivity software-related documents doesn't mean that politicians don't have other ways of derailing such plans. Gutierrez, as many people know, will be the second Massachusetts CIO to resign from the clearly embattled post in a year. Last December, Peter Quinn stepped down from the job saying "It is readily apparent that I have become a lightning rod with regard to any IT initiative. Even the smallest initiatives are being mitigated or stopped by some of the most unlikely and often uninformed parties."
Mitigated? Stopped? Halted? Same language. Different guy. That's all. If the Commonweath of Massashusetts really wanted these initiatives to succeed, none of this would be happening.
So far, there's no comment from some of the more outspoken members of the OpenDocument community yet. If some shows up, I'll update this post with the links.
