Open standards for Florida

From Florida Free Culture Wiki

alrelze Bare-bones summary: There are bills in the Florida legislature (SB 1974 and HB 1557) to re-establish the "Agency for Enterprise Information Technology", the predecessor of which was de-funded in 2005<ref>The State Technology Office.</ref>. Rep. Ed Homan introduced language into SB 1974 through a request to the Government Operations committee that would require open standards for Florida government agencies.

See Gavin's post, Legislature 2007: State of Florida IT, for the full story (and, probably, with less inaccuracies)

Since then, we've spoken with Rep. Homan who expressed interest in requiring open standards in Florida state universities, as well.

Other links:

• Update post: Microsoft lobbying on open standards.
• Linux.com: Microsoft's 'Men in Black' kill Florida open standards legislation
• MarketWatch.com: State by state, Microsoft responds to creeping threat

Contents 1 What the Bill Said 2 Other Info 2.1 "The Importance of Document Format Choice in Government" 2.2 Doug's Submission to "100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future" 2.3 Comment on "City of Largo" blog 3 To-do 3.1 Now 3.2 Later 4 Stuff we've done so far 5 References

[edit] What the Bill Said

((almost) directly from Gavin's blog post)

For a time, the Senate bill contained identical language to the bills pending in the Texas and Minnesota legislatures (on open standards). Section 30 of the bill would have required the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology to

"develop a plan and a business case analysis for the creation, exchange, and maintenance of documents by state agencies in an open format"

The plan and analysis would have been due by July 1, 2009. The section would also have required each state agency to

"be able to receive electronic documents in an open, extensible markup language-based file format for office applications and may not change documents to a file format used by only one vendor."

The Agency for Enterprise Information Technology would also have been required to

"develop rules for state agencies to follow in determining whether existing electronic documents must be converted to an open, extensible markup language-based file format."

[edit] Other Info

[edit] "The Importance of Document Format Choice in Government"

Doug Homan sent us the following email:

On March 28th, the Florida Senate Governmental Operations Committee inserted a substitute amendment (SB 1974) at the request of Florida House Representative Ed Homan which included text very similar to the proposed legislation in Texas and Minnesota requiring open data formats for document storage (see link and text below) . On March 29th, Representative Homan was greeted by three lobbyists representing Microsoft (Will McKinley of Dutko Poole McKinley, Jim Daughton, Jr. and Geoffrey Becker both of Metz, Hauser, Husband & Daughton, PA). They made their argument to Representative Homan that the legislation was a bad idea and left a one page letter explaining why (see attached). The senate immediately stripped the bill of the proposed text and is no longer willing to discuss any text which would change document formats from the status quo.

The one-page letter mentioned above is here: antiODF.pdf

[edit] Doug's Submission to "100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future"

"Open-Source Software in Education Study" from 100ideas.org is a submission from Doug Homan, Rep. Ed Homan's son, about open source software in education. The full text of the idea is quoted below:

Doug Homan Open-Source Software in Education Study I would like to propose a study be conducted judging the benefits of using open-source software in public schools. Open-source software is known for its "free" cost and its unique deployment capabilities can extend the useful life of PCs tremendously which can benefit the education IT budget. In addition, lower-class students will have a greater opportunity to own this critical tool and businesses will benefit form a work force trained on open-source software. Proprietary software companies sell their products at a greatly reduced price for educational use and is why open-source may not be seen as providing a huge savings in the IT budget. However, students that want to have a computer at home do not get the extreme discount and have to pay significant amounts of money. This creates a digital divide between the economic classes. The additional cost to businesses created by teaching students to use proprietary software is because a business must now either incur the cost to train its employees on open-source software, or continue to pay the proprietary license fees for software the employees already know. This is a significant cost. A PC running MS Windows, MS Office, and Adobe Photoshop costs approximately $1300. The same PC with open-source software would be approximately $500. For a small business needing 20 computers, that’s 16K saved that doesn't go to Redmond WA. I am an IT industry professional and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer who sees a potentially great benefit to our education system. © Copyright 2006 Republican Party of Florida. Paid for and sponsored by the Republican Party of Florida, P.O. Box 311, Tallahassee, FL 32302

[edit] Comment on "City of Largo" blog

The City of Largo blog by Dave Richards documents his efforts at deploying a Linux thin client system for the city of Largo (in Florida). Doug Homan made a comment on the post from 2007 January 18th about his interest in open source software and, perhaps, getting testimonials about successful uses of open source in government and education. Could anyone from UF contribute to this?

[edit] To-do

[edit] Now

• Blog an update (contact with Doug Homan, Roblimo)
  • Must include this image: [1]
• Meet with Marc Hoit to talk about the potential of legislation for universities to use open standards for documents
• Publicize news (Roblimo linux.com article) - Boing Boing, etc.

[edit] Later

• Write a reply to the antiODF.pdf document
• Contact other members of the Florida Senate committee on Governmental Operations (Nile and Eldo have contact info)
• Contact others who have worked on open standards in other states for help and support

[edit] Stuff we've done so far

• Found out about this (thanks to the hard work of Gavin and Eldo!)
• Created (probably) the most comprehensive write-up about the issue: Gavin's blog post
• Contacted Ray Wilson, staff director for the Senate Government Operations committee, who wrote the language and the analysis
• Contacted Rep. Ed Homan, who introduced the language
• Sent Dr. Hoit's contact info to Rep. Homan
• Send mail to Dr. Hoit inviting him to chat with us about open standards in universities
• Obtained the "antiODF.pdf document" from Microsoft lobbyists
• Chatted with the Tampa Linux Users Group (SLUG) and Robin Miller

[edit] References

<references/>