On Tuesday of last week, Governor Acevedo Vila attended Microsoft’s Government Leaders Forum. As an advocate for the adoption of open source software in our Government, this disturbs me. Even so, I’ll try to keep the open source rhetoric to a minimum. I don’t want this to be about proprietary versus free software. I want this discussion to be about choice. I want this discussion to be about the future stability of the Puerto Rican economy. So I couldn’t agree more with the Governor as he opened his speech at this prestigious forum: “The decisions Puerto Rico will make in the first decade of this new millennium will have a profound effect on our future quality of life. We sit at an important juncture in transforming our economy.” So if we are to make decisions, what are the choices? Have we properly prepared ourselves to make these decisions? Have we thoroughly analyzed the context of these decisions to determine all of the valid options?
I encourage you all to read the Governor’s speech. It is full of optimism and hope. It is a well-crafted speech that paints a fantastic picture of Puerto Rico today, and an even better Puerto Rico tomorrow. Unfortunately I live here and it sounds hollow when the facts, figures, and themes don’t match my personal observations. For example, the key to his entire speech was based on his strategy to build a new Commonwealth based on moving Puerto Rico to the new knowledge-based economy. He intends to accomplish this by leveraging two fundamental advantages of our beautiful and strategically located Island: 1) our sophisticated, highly educated, experienced and hard working people; and 2) our state-of-the-art telecommunications, transportation and utilities infrastructure, with an advanced e-government focus. As a leader myslef, I find this a pretty thin strategy.
Later in his speech he elaborates more on why these are fundamental advantages. As you might expect, in what was probably a fifteen minute speech, there are not many surprises announced that will make a dramatic difference. I would certainly like to know, however, how the begin the seventh busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere; having 40 shipping lines; and having International and regional airports with 4,300 cargo flights per month will help us build a knowledge economy.
One initiative in particular, I would welcome eagerly. Too bad, I’ve been hearing about it for about two years already. According to Acevedo Vila “We are also expanding the amount of on-line services and transactions to facilitate the process of starting and operating a business in Puerto Rico to reduce the amount of time required to process permits and payments and comply with legal requirements.” This is something that is desperately needed, I just can’t remember seeing anything about this anywhere else than this speech. There were several other announcements that seem to only exist in this speech as well. I hope that I’m just misinformed.
We are certainly an unusual species. We promise things that we have no intention of doing. We forcefully claim positions, and then invalidate those positions with our actions. We do things that are good, but allow them to fade away which is bad. These things trouble me, they mystify me. I’m a computer scientist, logic rules my life. However, logic is useless in understanding our behavior. For when we say that we want our government to leverage information technology to its fullest, making it a more accessible, transparent and effective in our organization through the adoption of information technologies and improved processes, that sounds like an awesome ideal. However, when we allow companies with deep pockets to compromise our decisions, then can we be sure that we are going to leverage information technology to its fullest? Further, when there are options that do not require significant license fees, why would we pledge we are making a significant investment in technology? When we compare ourselves to other governments doing the same thing, which are these governments? It is unlikely they are Chile, Brazil, China, Malaysia, Philippines, or India. Each of these countries are investing deeply in open source software, does that mean that we will?
The stakes are high indeed for how we answer these questions. Since our government is the largest employer, it is the standard bearer for Puerto Rico. Many companies will do as our government leads. According to El Nuevo Dia, our government already has $37 million worth of contracts with Microsoft. Again, my observations place that number closer to $150 million. With Gold Partners and many other Microsoft business partners, what this leadership means is significant persuasion on how Puerto Rican companies and therefore households spend their information technology dollars.
I’ll leave you to ponder the biggest question of all. With nearly four million residents, the Governor was proud to claim that the Puerto Rican e-government site processes an average of 400 transactions per month. That volume of transactions means that 1/10,000th percent of the population completes transactions monthly. For $150 million dollars, do you think that is a good investment of our valuable tax dollars?
