Peter J. Quinn
Peter J. Quinn, an information technology worker, was Chief Information Officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from September 2002 through January 2006. He is noted for his controversial support for OpenDocument, a standard format for office documents.
Quinn established a requirement that all state government documents be formatted in OpenDocument. This created intense opposition from Microsoft, whose Office software uses proprietary formats and does not recognize OpenDocument files. Quinn was supported by his boss Eric Kriss and others. But he was also opposed in his efforts; for example by Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin. Furthermore, Stephen Kurkjian of the Boston Globe suggested that Quinn had a conflict of interest. He was a speaker at IT conferences that paid part of his trip expenses. Quinn was cleared of wrongdoing, but he has resigned, stating the following:
In an interview Quinn stated that "he hears Microsoft was the Boston Globe's source."
After leaving the CIO role in Massachusetts, Quinn landed a position in 2015 with the State of Ohio where he was ousted for financial wrongdoing. His ouster came after Ohio’s inspector general in December accused him of conspiring to rig $469,000 worth of price-inflated IT contracts with that state’s Workers Compensation bureau. Following his Ohio position, Quinn landed a job with New York City's Department of Education in 2016. Quinn quit his job as NYC opened an investigation into his behavior.
Quinn is a graduate of Cambridge College.
