Review backs trips by technology chief
No conflict found for aide
The Romney administration's chief technology officer did not violate conflict-of-interest standards or other rules when he took 12 out-of-state trips to attend conferences during the past year without obtaining the written approval of his boss, according to a review by the governor's budget chief.
Peter J. Quinn, director of the state's Informational Technology Division and its chief information officer, received verbal authorization for all the trips from Eric A. Kriss, who then was secretary of administration and finance, Eric Fehrnstrom, director of communications for Romney, said yesterday.
Fehrnstrom, however, said that Administration and Finance Secretary Thomas H. Trimarco had directed Quinn to fill out the needed paperwork for the dozen trips he had taken since last December to comply with a 1995 regulation requiring that state officials get prior approval from their superiors for any business travel they want to make when the expenses are being paid by private individuals or companies.
''Secretary Trimarco is sending out a memorandum to all state agencies that that requirement remains in place and needs to be followed," Fehrnstrom said.
Also, Fehrnstrom said that while sponsors of many of the conferences included computer software companies, Quinn had assured Trimarco that none of the firms are currently state vendors or are bidding on state business.
Quinn has been at the center of a controversial decision made by the Romney administration to require that all documents produced by the state's executive branch be stored in a new, universal computer format called OpenDocument, which would work with many brands of software and is less likely to become obsolete. The change, which would require modifications to the software running on thousands of state computers, is widely viewed as a challenge to
Trimarco's review was prompted by questions raised last month by the Globe, which reported that Quinn had taken numerous trips to conferences, which had paid for his attendance, during the last two years, but that he had not filed requests for written authorizations for the trips in 2005. Quinn told the Globe that he had received the verbal authorization for all the trips from Kriss, his immediate superior, but phone calls to Kriss's home seeking comment at the time were not returned.
In an interview this week, Kriss confirmed that he had verbally approved all of Quinn's requests to travel to conferences in 2005. Kriss said he relieved Quinn of the responsibility of filling out the forms for the trips this year because he felt that the reason that the regulation had been put in place originally -- the fiscal crisis of the mid-1990s had cut out all state-funded travel -- had expired.
''I knew of every trip that Peter was taking, and I approved them all," Kriss said. ''He was in demand at most of these because of the path towards [open format] that we were taking. People in other states were anxious to hear about the Massachusetts experience." Also, Kriss emphasized that three of 12 trips Quinn took were made after Kriss announced on Aug. 31 that the executive branch was moving toward open format software so any interest in influencing the state's decision would have been removed.
Among the other conferences in 2005 for which Quinn recently submitted documentation were:
An international forum on ''free software" in Brazil from May 31-June 3. The conference paid $900 for Quinn to attend; he paid $380.
A Linux World conference in San Francisco on Aug. 8-9. The conference will be reimbursing Quinn for $1,133 for his appearance.
A conference on Open Source technology in Madison, Wis. on Aug. 16. The conference picked up $626 for Quinn's appearance as a speaker at an executives' reception.
Stephen Kurkjian can be reached at kurkjian@globe.com. 
