Senators question file-storage shift

Massachusetts lawmakers are questioning an effort by the Romney administration that could jettison Microsoft's popular Office software from thousands of state computers.

At issue is how the state government stores the millions of digital documents and other public records it creates. The Romney administration wants documents stored in a particular format that would allow the records to be read by a variety of software packages -- except Microsoft Office.

The state Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee is holding a hearing Monday on the proposed document storage standards after blind and other visually impaired state workers raised concerns. They said Microsoft Office makes their work easier, and alternative programs could make it impossible for them to do their jobs.

''How will people with disabilities in the state, who are working for the state, how will they deal with this thing?" said Curtis Chong, president of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science. Chong said Microsoft has added a number of features to Office that allow the software to interact with Braille printers, screen magnifiers, and screen-reader programs that speak the text appearing on the computer screen.

He said that if workers are barred from using Microsoft Office, ''there is no accessible office product that we can use."

State Senator Marc Pacheco, a Democrat from Taunton who chairs the committee, said he scheduled the hearing after Peter Quinn, the state's chief information officer, disclosed the new document policy this month. Quinn wants to move away from storing documents created by Microsoft Office because that software uses a unique data format that may not be readable by other programs. Instead, he ordered that by 2007, the state's executive offices begin storing all files in OpenDocument, a data standard created by a consortium of computer companies.

Saving files in OpenDocument would ensure that they can be read by a variety of software packages, because any software company can add the OpenDocument format without paying royalties or licensing fees. Already, the Canadian software firm Corel Corp. has committed to offering OpenDocument in its WordPerfect office software, which has only a tiny sliver of the market. In addition, Sun Microsystems Inc. already uses OpenDocument in its StarOffice software suite, and in a free version of StarOffice, called OpenOffice, which can be downloaded from the Internet.

Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems, agreed that his company's StarOffice and OpenOffice programs are playing catch-up when it comes to features for disabled people. ''We will cheerfully admit that it's not as good as what's there under Windows today," Bray said.

The change will not affect how people gain access to state government websites. But it could cause problems for users of Microsoft Word who download state records stored in the new format, because Microsoft Corp. has so far refused to make its software compatible with OpenDocument.

If Massachusetts drops Microsoft Office, that could encourage government agencies in other states to follow suit.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant may be changing its position on the OpenDocument format. Last week, Microsoft chief technology officer Ray Ozzie told the ZDNet Internet news site that Microsoft is working with a French company to develop a product that would translate Office documents into the OpenDocument format.

Still, Microsoft is officially opposed to the Massachusetts changeover for now. In an e-mail message, Alan Yates, general manager of the Microsoft Office business unit, welcomed the hearing by Pacheco's committee.

''We're encouraged by the additional and thorough review that the Legislature is pursuing to better understand the costs and issues associated with the existing Massachusetts proposal," Yates said.

Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who oversees the state's public documents, also opposes the new storage standards, although his office has not explained why.

Pacheco wants to know whether Quinn has the authority to make a major change in the state's records management policies without input from Galvin. He also wants proof that the benefits of the change would outweigh the cost of switching over.

In response to concerns from disabled workers, Quinn's office issued a policy statement on the new data policy that would allow state agencies ''to take actions for the purpose of ensuring that the rights of persons with disabilities are respected." That could mean some workers would continue to use Microsoft Office while colleagues move to a different brand of software.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.