Massachusetts appoints acting CIO

Massachusetts has appointed an acting chief information officer (CIO), Bethann Pepoli, a state spokesman confirmed Friday. The previous CIO Peter Quinn announced his resignation late last month, after drawing plenty of attention, both positive and negative, as he spearheaded a controversial proposal for the Commonwealth to move away from Microsoft's electronic document formats in favor of the OpenDocument file format.

Formerly chief operating officer for the state's information technology division, Pepoli worked closely with Quinn, according to Eric Fehrnstrom, director of communications for Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Pepoli could be considered for the permanent CIO position, Fehrnstrom said in a phone interview Friday. There are a number of candidates already in the running, both internal and external, he added. The state has yet to determine Quinn's permanent replacement.

Massachusetts remains committed to Quinn's proposal of moving to OpenDocument, according to Fehrnstrom. "There's no change in that policy," he said.

In September, Quinn finalized a policy for Massachusetts agencies to develop a gradual plan for migration to Open Document Format for Office Applications, also known as OpenDocument, beginning Jan. 1, 2007. The plan would involve phasing out the state's Microsoft Office use.

Quinn quit the CIO role in part because of the national and global attention his espousal of OpenDocument drew, according to an internal memo he wrote to his staff within the IT division. "I have become a lightning rod with regard to any IT initiative," he wrote in his memo. Quinn had also been under investigation about out-of-state trips he'd taken to address technology conferences, but he had been cleared of any wrongdoing in the matter.

Shortly before his resignation, Quinn was a participant at a public forum in Boston to debate the future of electronic data formats. The forum pitted OpenDocument supporters IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. against Microsoft, which was pushing its proposed rival Open XML electronic document specification. At that meeting, Quinn said that Massachusetts would change the Jan. 1, 2007 date if the state found itself unable to properly address accessibility issues raised by people with disabilities as it migrated to OpenDocument-compliant software.