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This paper appears in the publication, Journal of Cases on Information Technology, Volume 11, Issue 1
edited by Mehdi Khosrow-Pour © 2009, IGI Global
Politics Hinders Open Standards
in the Public Sector:
The Massachusetts Open
Document Format Decision
Adenekan (Nick) Dedeke, Northeastern University, USA
Executive summary
In 2003, Eric Kriss, of the Executive Office of the Governor of Massachusetts, advised all employees that the Executive Branch would begin a transition of its information technology resources
into open standards. The intent of the plan was the standardization of the IT infrastructure and
the improvement of interoperability across agencies. The Executive Office later extended the
open standards policy to electronic documents. In the quest to make documents accessible across
agencies, Open Document Format (ODF) was declared to be the preferred format for storing
data. This decision provoked a serious conflict between Microsoft and the Executive Branch
after it became clear that proprietary open document formats, such as the one that was being
offered by Microsoft, were declared to be unacceptable. This case explores the decisions that the
champions made, the role that politics played in the process and the impact of these decisions
on the ODF implementation.
Keywords: case study; governmental IS; information system implementation; IS architecture;
IS policy
Organizational Background
Government and IT Organization Structure
The Massachusetts State Government consisted of three braches, the Legislature, the
Judicial and the Executive Branches. The Executive Branch consisted of the Office of
the Governor and fifteen executive departments. The Executive Office for Administration and Finance (EOAF) had fifteen divisions and Bureaus, one of which was the
Information Technology Division (Exhibit 1). The Information Technology Division
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Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 11(1), 65-82, January-March 2009 65
(ITD), which is the primary focus of this article, was a unit that reported to the head of
the Executive Office for Administration and Finance.
The ITD was charged with the responsibility of providing information technology
(IT) services for the 170 plus agencies in the Executive Department. These services
included Internet access, enterprise applications, wide area networks, Web portal services, a central e-mail system, and Web and application hosting services. The ITD also
set the IT standards for all other Executive Department agencies. By an action of the
Legislature, the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) was created to head the
ITD in 1996 (ITD, 2006a). The CIO reported to the Secretary of the EOAF. The ITD
had ten operational groups.
In the fiscal year 2005, the ITD employed over 250 technologists and IT financial, legal and policy experts. All the executive’s offices reporting to the Office of the
Governor had about 1700 technologists. Some 95 percent of IT employees were union
employees. Microsoft supplied over 80 percent of the installed desktop software within
the Executive Branch. Most of the agencies reporting to the Office of the Governor had
their own Chief Information Officers and Chief Security Officers. The agency Chief
Information Officer (CIO) was the expert in the agency, department or other branch of
government who had the delegated authority for all information technology resources in
use within the entity. The responsibilities included, in some cases, the day-to-day planning, budgeting, deploying, maintaining and controlling of the information technology
resources of the entity. The agency Chief Security Officer (CSO) was the individual,
within an agency, department or bureau, who had the delegated authority for ensuring
that the information and the IT systems of an entity had adequate security controls in
place. The CIO and the CSO may or may not be the same person. The agency CIOs and
CSOs were independent in the sense that they did not report directly to the Office of
the CIO within the EOAF. The agency CIOs that reported to the Office of the Governor
were required to submit their projects for review and the approval of the Office of the
CIO only if a planned information technology development project or purchase by the
agency had a total projected cost, including the cost of any related hardware, software
and consulting fees, that exceeded $200,000. All agency CIOs were also regular civil
servants rather than political appointees of the Governor. Because the Office of the CIO
and the Chief Technology Officer positions were created during the Administration
of Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican governor, political appointees filled the two
positions. It was the norm in Massachusetts for political appointees to leave their jobs
every four years, owing to the change in governorship. However, Democrat politicians
dominated both houses of the Legislature.
Government Staff Structure and Political Context
The Commonwealth, as well as its Information Technology Divisions, also had a tiered
structure. First, there were the career civil servants who worked permanently for the
Government. Second, there were politicians and third there were politically elected
personnel. This case focuses on the decisions of the political appointees of the Informa-
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