At a State Department townhall conducted by Secretary Clinton, a staffer asked why Internet Explorer is mandated, while Firefox has been security-approved for the “entire intelligence community.” The answer? A whole lot of bullshit, especially the insane citing of “expense.”
Internet Explorer isn’t mandated in every governmental department, and Firefox has been vetted and cleared as just as secure as IE (duh), so it’s a legitimate question: Why not use the faster, safer, more customisable and more reliable browser? Clinton has no idea why Firefox is barred, which is totally fine with us—we really are happy she’s spending her time on other things.
But Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy chimes in that it’s “an expense question,” at which point he is promptly and rightfully shouted down that Firefox is free, for god’s sake. He goes into a lot of nonsense about “patches” and how even things that are free aren’t really free, which sounds to us like a lame attempt to explain away his first answer—he probably didn’t know Firefox was free when he cited expense in the first place. If Firefox has already been implemented in other sectors of government, it stands to reason that it could be adopted by the State Department fairly easily and quickly.
The rest of both his and Secretary Clinton’s answer is mostly impenetrable, metaphor-laden government-speak about cutting costs that, sorry guys, isn’t going to make us forget that you just claimed a free and vastly superior program, one that’s already in wide use in other sectors of government, is too expensive to implement.
Pat Kennedy, you’re officially on my bad side. [State Department via Switched]
boc
Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 1:24 PMConsidering this is government (not mine but still applies) it’s reasonable to expect expense to be an issue.
Supporting Firefox means having to spend money to put in place a support framework (staff, training, etc).
Now you probably think that supporting Firefox is a breeze and generally that’s true.
But a government will outsource this to a third-party who *will* comeback and say it costs $X million dollars a year to support.
Does it costs that much? No, that’s just what the supplier thinks they’ll be able to get out of the government.
Too much $ – “it’s an expense question”. Not too much $ and sales has just won a $X million dollar contract to support a browser that requires minimal support.
Just the way government works, and we let them get away with it.
Mat Perovic
Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 1:43 PMIn all workplaces FF isn’t so great. Where I am we rely heavily on FF, it is the latest version but it just can’t handle some of the web based programs we use. Chrome and IE7/8 run so much better.
Yes he seems to be weaseling out of his comments but maybe there is more behind it.
And unless you’re working there, why does it matter if they use IE?
hugh
Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 1:53 PMyou know times are tough when the us government cant even afford free products
ChairXhat
Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 6:54 PMthe Version of IE8 the american goverment uses is not the same that is commercially available. it supposedly has more security features and encryption protocols implimented. Firefox being open source makes it more easily hackable or somthing along those lines. cant remember where I read this exactly however there was that millitary grade version of windows XP sold to the US army a while back.. so Im guessing that this expence is along those lines.