Deval Patrick appoints Microsoft lobbyist to technology working group

I voted for Deval Patrick for governor of the fine commonwealth, er, state that I live in; I was disappointed to see that he appointed the Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs, Brian Burke, to his technology working group. It's disappointing because Mr. Burke will likely attempt to overturn a great technology decision made by requiring that the state adopt OpenDocument format (recently published as an ISO standard) as its preferred format by January 1, 2007. This would mean that my government would no longer be paying so much for Microsoft Office when cheaper alternatives, such as OpenOffice, exist. It's true that OpenOffice has its flaws, but as a daily user of Microsoft's lovely office suite, I can verify that Microsoft Office does as well. (Why, for example, when I search Outlook's inbox, does it return results from my oldest email first?) The working group has a public meeting at 7 pm on Monday, December 11, 2006.