Michael Dolan Dot Com

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005

Nicholas Carr – Open Standards Matter?

While I could never agree with Carr’s “IT Doesn’t Matter” theory, I liked his recent blog entry regarding open standards and the State of Massachusetts’ decision to implement the OASIS open document format. I would have naturally assumed he would argue there is no value in open formats, but if you read the entire post, he does something I did not expect – agrees with a decision that seems to go against his most (un)popular stance on the value of IT…

Microsoft is, in essence, arguing for the maintenance of the status quo. It says that “Commonwealth agencies should be allowed to choose the technologies that best suit their needs, particularly in a context where, as here, multiple open and competing technologies/formats are available and supported in the marketplace, with many document conversion utilities already available and with no licensing barriers to future conversion software.” But this reveals the flaw in Microsoft’s position. The state has determined that the status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. It believes that the lack of standardization in technology and data is undermining its ability to do its work effectively on behalf of its citizens. The state, in other words, has made a conscious decision to endure short-term disruption in order to achieve a flexible and efficient IT architecture for the future.