Re: [SLUG] Please help advocate open standards in Florida state IT

From: Aaron Steimle (asteimle@washpat.com)
Date: Mon Apr 09 2007 - 12:07:20 EDT


I called Al Lawson, left a message.
I called Bill Posey and talked with a staff member ( sorry didn't write
down his name). First, the staff member I talked with was extremely nice
and helpful. I didn't know anything about that particular bill but
looked it up and explained to be about how things are added and removed.
He also gave me the number of the "Senate Operations Governing
committee"(SOGC) ( I am pretty sure that's what it was) he said this is
where I would find out why the amendment was taken out.

I call the SOGC and talked with Ray Wilson, another very helpful human.
Wilson explained that the committee doesn't need a reason to reject any
portion of a bill, which, I thought was a great democratic procedure for
our constitutional representative democratic republic. So as we have it,
our elected representatives do not have to explain to there
constituents why they remove sections of bills that greatly effect us.
But in this case, they did give an explanation. The clear and precise
explanation for removing a " ..plan and a business case analysis for
creation,exchange, and maintenance of documents by state agencies in an
open format " in a bill "..which include defining architecture standards
for information technology & developing strategic information technology
plan..." was that it was outside the direction of the bill.

This is a situation that validates the failure in our constitution and
the degradation of political system. Lobbyist should not be allowed in
government for a company that has a monopoly on a market. If Microsoft
wants to have the governments use Microsoft products they should donate
them to the government and get a tax write off for it. I should not have
to pay taxes so government employees can use sub standard expensive
software.
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