Day: January 17, 2005

Government, Open Source, and XML

January 17, 2005 / Bill Trippe / 0 Comments

Writing for WindowsIT Pro, Paul Thurrott reports that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has reached agreement with Microsoft on a license change to Microsoft Office that may have far-reaching consequences in several arenas of interest to Gilbane Report readers.

Microsoft has reached an agreement with Massachusetts that will result in the software giant easing its license restrictions for its Office 2003 document formats in return for the state dropping a previous requirement to only use document formats based on open standards. In early 2004, Massachusetts announced that it would require all state agencies to create and store information in document types based on open standards like HTML… The goal of the format requirement was to ensure that the state could read digital documents in perpetuity and not have to worry about document conversions down the road if they adopted a format that was later abandoned by its maker. However, under terms of its agreement with Microsoft, Massachusetts has revised its requirement to include so-called “open formats” such as the XML-based document types supported by Office 2003 applications such as Word and Excel.

Thurrott goes on to say that this compromise with Microsoft should be viewed as a blow to open source advocates, who would rather see governments adopt open standards for document archiving. Thurrott has a good point; I know from my own consulting that government archivists would love to have open, high-fidelity document formats to choose from. On the other hand, it is potentially good news that Microsoft will be loosening its licensing restrictions on the schemas that underlie the ubiquitous document formats.

Ernst & Young on Internal Controls

January 17, 2005 / Bill Zoellick / 0 Comments

Last fall Ernst & Young published the results of a survey on trends in the implementation of internal controls,
focusing in particular on the progress that companies were making in meeting
Section 404 deadlines for Sarbanes-Oxley. Since the publication date was
last October, this isn’t breaking news … but the existence of the survey was
news to me and I found it useful and interesting. (You can get to the
Acrobat file by clicking here.)

The general message is (surprise!) that companies were finding that it was
taking much more effort than they expected and that they were not, in general,
sticking to the schedules they had put into place earlier.

But there are also findings that are a more surprising. Here is an
example: 59% of the companies surveyed said that they were tracking their
testing and remediation work in an Access database or an Excel spreadsheet ( !!)
. The implication is that these companies are not at all able to provide
real-time information about remediation across the organization. Bummer.

Here is another one: nearly 30% of the companies surveyed had not yet
selected a technology platform for 404 compliance implementation. Since
these companies will have, in general, met their initial deadlines without
making a platform commitment, that suggests that there are a good number of
companies that have worked through the first round of 404 issues without making
a big technology buy. These companies are in a good position to bring
clear expectations and requirements to their planning and purchasing.

2005 is the year that Section 404 internal controls become required for all
SEC filers, not just the accelerated filers. It is a pretty good bet that there
will be more companies coming to terms with the issues highlighted in the
E&Y survey. It is worth a look if you haven’t seen it.