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Doc Format Legislation - elevating a great comment

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Here is a comment submitted to an earlier blog posting about doc formats. For those of my readers who don't know, my mother was a member of the NY State Assembly for a decade and her Chief of Staff (if that is the right title) recently posted into my blog a thoughtful comment. Michael has a great combination of real knowlege about state-level law-making, and technology depth (Masters in Information Technology I believe). Anyway - rather than talk for him, here is his comment. I am writing a longer piece which I hope to post shortly about all the legislative activity, and I can assure you I am going to have to consider Mike's points as I write.

 Originally Posted 3/4/07 as a comment:

Jason:

I have some questions that I think would be useful for a lot of people to think about and answer, including you. These issues have been troubling me for some time.  As you know, the California Assembly introduced AB1668 (https://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/asm/ab_1651-1700/ab_1668_bill_20070223_introduced.html) and the New York Legislature is being actively lobbied to do the same (by IBM).   I personally do not think this issue is an ODF vs Microsoft XML thing, I think it is far more insidious than a simple contest on who is better or which standard should prevail.

This topic is a question of public policy and whether or not this in the best interest of the people. The other big question is whether or not a legislature should interrupt the fair procurement practices of a State and force standards on multi-million dollar enterprise level systems.  To be honest many of the Assemblyman barely no how to use a computer much less make a decisions on ODF and XML.

Here is the section of the bill that really bothers me:

Beginning on or after January 1, 2008, all

documents, including, but not limited to, text, spreadsheets, and

presentations, produced by any state agency shall be created,

exchanged, and preserved in an open extensible markup language-based,

XML-based file format, as specified by the department.

Many if not a vast majority of the documents created by governments are made by automated means.  New York has an enormous computer infrastructure producing 10's of millions of documents weekly as defined by the bill AB1668.  The way this bill is written would cause an enormous fiscal burden to the state forcing them to rewrite many of the legacy systems to bring it into compliance with the proposed specification   Many states including New York have Archival rules in place to handle the long term access to these records, in NY it is called “SARA" (https://iarchives.nysed.gov/Publications/pubOrderServlet?category=ServicesGovRecs) . These regulations maintain that the state archives come up with rules and Best Practices on archival and the retrieval of documents, in addition, when records should be destroyed or disposed of. This is an important point because some of the bloggers on this site contend we should be able to view records from the government for an indefinite period of time which is not the case by matter of statute.

Here are my questions for this fantastic and talented forum to consider:

What is the cost benefit analysis of this move to ODF when automated processes produce a bulk of the documents that the state produces?

Why are we forcing procurement requirements at the legislative level instead of using proper system engineering practices at the requirements building stage?

Does not the states procurement process already address these issues by forcing contractors to adhere to the states archival rules which allow vendors the flexibility to come up with the best technology for the state to use?

Why do these bill force specs on the systems that were never developed or designed with these standards in mind causing the potential of the reengineering of legacy systems.  (No grandfather clause)?

What do we as a society get in return for this massive investment?

Ultimately who gains from these bills?  I will answer one “IBM global services”

One more point.

A lot of people that use the ODF argument essentially say it’s some type of elixir where magically the state agencies will collaborate. ODF and XML will not help that or even come close to making that a reality until an enterprise wide data dictionary or Meta Data mapping repository is done. This issue is so complex I feel I do not have the time or patience to articulate myself on this subject. In addition there are so many rules and regulation on interagency data mining (for privacy sake) that this could be a topic all onto itself.

In fairness and openness I know Jason. I am not a fan or an enemy either Microsoft or IBM I think they both are awesome companies trying to grow and expand their market share. With respect this forum and feel that Jason is showing his integrity by taking it on the chin for Microsoft. The ODF standards community has a place in the enterprise level however with respect to this topic I see it more as a smoke and mirrors issue. I feel that the current rules and procurement practices in place protect the public far better than the various lobbyists tend to lead people (legislators) to believe.

This is an issue where if these bills become law one company clearly wins.  This issue and subsequent bills is big money where consulting and integration of large enterprise system becomes the focus not ODF.  

Please comment, I look forward to your critique or agreement.

Michael P. Ridley

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2007
    Jason, Thank you for the introduction.  First, I want to apologize on the post, it was a little rough.  I was reading my daily news stories at around 12-1 last night EST and felt compelled to post on the legislative aspects of this topic.  Second, you were right on both counts with my former job title under your mom and my academic background.  Currently I am the Director of Technology Development for NYSTAR (New York State Science, Technology and Academic Research Foundation) http://www.nystar.state.ny.us. I also was appointed to Governor Spitzer’s technology transition team last November and have been watching this issue for about 2 years.  This issue has been growing in momentum since the Massachusetts initiative and I knew it was only a matter of time before it would get to this level.  I feel now it is time to start to build a policy discussion since it is only a matter of time before the New York State Assembly and Governor Spitzer have to deal with this issue. I also want to clarify that I posted on Jason’s site not an endorsement of Jason or Microsoft but because I feel it is the only true forum on this topic.  Yes, Jason works for Microsoft, but the other members of this forum regularly beat him up on this topic. Because of this, I feel this is the only forum on the internet where both sides are equally matched. I feel that this interactive forum will give me the best possible information I am looking for. I am not invested either way about what ultimately happens with this issue, but what I do care about is that ALL of the facts are revealed so decision makers can make the best decisions for their constituents. Policy makers routinely have to weigh the “public benefit” of things like this since they have a limited amount of resources to dispense year to year.  With healthcare, education and homeland security all being big budget priorities for the foreseeable future, a bill with a potential fiscal impact in the hundreds of millions of dollars needs to have more justification than what is currently being argued about.  For example, I know one company is lobbying the hold harmless aspect of this and not really getting into the potential consulting windfall that could come their way, thus not telling legislators the whole story. When I worked for Jason’s mother, this was the minefield we constantly had to navigate.  It was up to us to determine the full truth and reality of the potential public policies that she was enacting and what, if any, unforeseen impacts these policies would have long-term.  To gather this information sometimes was impossible, but thanks to the forum Jason has assembled, I feel this will be a much easier task as far as this issue is concerned.   I will also be reaching out to California Assemblyman Leno to request that he and his staff monitor this forum, adding a real-time dimension to this topic. I look forward to this discussion and hope this that this forum will begin the processes of illuminating this topic and all the potential implications it may or may not have. Thank you, Michael P. Ridley

  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2007
    XMl as the panacea again. I disagree. If Open XML adhered to the following two(of ten) goals of XML, which it does not, it might actually be a decent step toward a solution to a portion of the archival problem: "It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents." "XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear." It is not easy to write a good word processor or spreadsheet program.  Not even the programs that implement the ODF are easy to write, thus the need for the ODF standard to help accomplish the goal of making successful archival solutions possible by assuring that there is help in the form of detailed specifications to compensate for the complexity of the task. It would be exagerating the bounds of my knowledge, to claim that solving the archival problem is one of the primary goals of ODF, let alone to claim that it is intended to guarantee such a solution. I, quite frankly, don't know that that is true. I do know that  some of the requests for changes to the ODF specification during its development came with claims that the changes would make the standard better suited to help implementers achieve an archival solution.  The purpose of most standards really isn't to guarantee anything, but rather to make certain tasks easier by narrowing the choices that a builder/maker/designer/maintainer has to choose from; reducing a bewildering array of possiblities to a few commonly agreed upon and easily available options. While requiring conformance to a standard does not in a legal or business sense guarantee the appropriateness of solutions to specific problems,  it can force procurement personnel to choose solutions that are more likely to to solve the specific problems and, perhaps more importantly, avoid solutions which are known not to fix specific problems.

  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2007
    (1) AB-1668 is not a "pro-IBM" bill.  With their Lotus Smartsuite software on life-support, IBM has little to gain from opening up the desktop. (2) Who stands to gain from AB-1668?   (A) State agencies. They will have a broader set of applications that they can use for creating and processing documents.  And, yes, I believe that a truly-open, XML-based format that is not controlled by a single vendor, but is instead controlled by a neutral standards group and utilized by a plethora of vendors will bring benefits to the state agencies in the long run.   (B) State contractors. They will not want to use two incompatible formats, so they are very likely to only use the truly open format.  They also will gain all of the benefits listed above.   (C) Individuals and businesses which use state forms and reports.  Instead of being required to purchase a single vendor's products, they will have the option of using nearly any vendor's products to handle those forms and reports.  This includes job applicants, by the way, whom are often not able to spring for the currently-required office suite.   (D) Anyone that pays taxes in the state.  See Adam Smith quote below.   (E) Microsoft.  It has been years since Microsoft added much improvement in utility to end users.  This has been because there was no viable competition, and therefore no incentive to truly improve the software.   (F) Competing software companies.  Adam Smith says, "Monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which[referring to good management] can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-defense." (3) Since the old file formats are going away anyway and the state (my state) will face billions of dollars of costs either way, I prefer that California chooses formats that enable anyone to access state documents without having to spring for the price of any particular vendor's software.  I would feel the same if it were IBM, Sun, Corel, Novell, or Red Hat that had monopoly share of the market.  The interests of consumers (in this case, including the state of California) are only served by having numerous choices for the products they buy.  ODF enables this, while not-so-Open-XML does not. The main Adam Smith quote: ".... The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufacture, is alwasy in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention...." In this case, there is already a monopoly provider which is crusading for an alternate "standard" controlled by them in the place of an open standard useful for all in the industry. With your employer having so much to lose from these kinds of laws, we ought to be all the more suspicious of anything they force you to say. I think that you and your team are mostly honest, well-meaning individuals. If you were spun out from control from the current corporate leadership, I have no doubt that you would have full ODF capability as a full peer format within a month or two, as well as going ahead and doing the work to harmonize the formats enough that any competitor in the market would use any format.  From a consumer and support point of view, that would be ideal.  I am sure that such an event would be a tragedy in your HQ. I wrote an open letter to the California Assembly here: http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2007/04/06/to-the-members-of-the-california-state-assembly/

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2007
    (1) AB-1668 is not a "pro-IBM" bill.  With their Lotus Smartsuite software on life-support, IBM has little to gain from opening up the desktop. (2) Who stands to gain from AB-1668?   (A) State agencies. They will have a broader set of applications that they can use for creating and processing documents.  And, yes, I believe that a truly-open, XML-based format that is not controlled by a single vendor, but is instead controlled by a neutral standards group and utilized by a plethora of vendors will bring benefits to the state agencies in the long run.   (B) State contractors. They will not want to use two incompatible formats, so they are very likely to only use the truly open format.  They also will gain all of the benefits listed above.   (C) Individuals and businesses which use state forms and reports.  Instead of being required to purchase a single vendor's products, they will have the option of using nearly any vendor's products to handle those forms and reports.  This includes job applicants, by the way, whom are often not able to spring for the currently-required office suite.   (D) Anyone that pays taxes in the state.  See Adam Smith quote below.   (E) Microsoft.  It has been years since Microsoft added much improvement in utility to end users.  This has been because there was no viable competition, and therefore no incentive to truly improve the software.   (F) Competing software companies.  Adam Smith says, "Monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which[referring to good management] can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-defense." (3) Since the old file formats are going away anyway and the state (my state) will face billions of dollars of costs either way, I prefer that California chooses formats that enable anyone to access state documents without having to spring for the price of any particular vendor's software.  I would feel the same if it were IBM, Sun, Corel, Novell, or Red Hat that had monopoly share of the market.  The interests of consumers (in this case, including the state of California) are only served by having numerous choices for the products they buy.  ODF enables this, while not-so-Open-XML does not. The main Adam Smith quote: ".... The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufacture, is alwasy in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention...." In this case, there is already a monopoly provider which is crusading for an alternate "standard" controlled by them in the place of an open standard useful for all in the industry. With your employer having so much to lose from these kinds of laws, we ought to be all the more suspicious of anything they force you to say. I think that you and your team are mostly honest, well-meaning individuals. If you were spun out from control from the current corporate leadership, I have no doubt that you would have full ODF capability as a full peer format within a month or two, as well as going ahead and doing the work to harmonize the formats enough that any competitor in the market would use any format.  From a consumer and support point of view, that would be ideal.  I am sure that such an event would be a tragedy in your HQ. I wrote an open letter to the California Assembly here: http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2007/04/06/to-the-members-of-the-california-state-assembly/

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2007
    The comment has been removed