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Hillary Clinton laughed off the suggestion that Firefox be allowed on State Department computers, admitting she had no knowledge on the issue. Her Under Secretary commented that Firefox was too "expensive" when compared to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  (Source: U.S. State Department)
Free isn't so free, State Department waxes

Firefox, is seeing growing support in the business world thanks to its easy patching, extensibility, and standards support.  However, many branches of the federal government still forbid its use, among them the U.S. State Department.

At a recent question and answer session government employee Jim Finkle called out Secretary Hillary Clinton and Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy for not using the software, in the following exchange:
Finkle: Can you please let the staff use an alternative Web browser called Firefox? I just--(applause)--I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn't use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don't understand why State can't use it. It's a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.)

Clinton: Well, apparently, there's a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don't know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.)

Kennedy: The answer is, at the moment, it's an expense question. We can --

Finkle: It's free. (Laughter.)

Kennedy: Nothing is free. (Laughter.) It's a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we're looking at. And thanks to the secretary, there is a significant increase in the 2010 budget request that's pending for what is called the Capital Investment Fund, by which we fund our information technology operations. With the secretary's continuing pushing, we're hoping to get that increase in the Capital Investment Fund. And with those additional resources, we will be able to add multiple programs to it.

Yes, you're correct; it's free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you're running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the secretary rightly said, out fobs and other devices, you're caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can't do everything at once.

While Mr. Kennedy certainly is correct that software installation and maintenance isn't free, Firefox arguably is closer to an industry leading solution than Internet Explorer 8 and has proven itself at many businesses to be relatively easy to patch and maintain.  It is also disappointing to see the Secretary of State's ignorance or perhaps lack of concern on the topic.  Considering the expensive pet projects the government develops, the minimal cost of supporting a browser compatible with the latest standards doesn't seem like it should be too tall an order.

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What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By TomZ on 7/17/2009 7:48:41 AM , Rating: 5
...because I guess I need some!

This blog post is complete rubbish. Why would you expect Secretary Clinton to know the status of Firefox rollout in the department - don't you think she has more important issues to deal with?

And your last paragraph shows your complete ignorance and bias. IE has great advantages over Firefox in terms of being able to be centrally managed. And quite frankly, if an organization is already running the current version of IE (or Firefox), it is foolish for them to dedicate 2X the resources to support the other browser. Neither browser is that much better than the other to justify the added maintenance expense.

Finally, the mocking quotes in your title seem to imply that the State Department thinks that Firefox has a licensing cost. That's misleading.

In short, the State Department undersecretary is right, and your blog post is rubbish.




RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By oTAL (blog) on 7/17/2009 9:34:30 AM , Rating: 4
For the first time ever I'll do something that usually annoys me. I'll post just to say I couldn't agree more since rating you up just didn't feel good enough.

She'd probably be a little more forgiving if Mick showed some ignorance regarding the names of most foreign leaders (which I'd expect her to know).

Furthermore, everybody know that from a corporate stance the argument does make sense! IE is easier to manage and update. With FF, if a sys admin wants to upgrade as little as 500 PCs, he's in for some trouble.

That obviously doesn't change the fact that FF is a MUCH better browser.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/17/2009 11:13:19 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
IE has great advantages over Firefox in terms of being able to be centrally managed.


Let me call it on its name: ignorant bullshit.

If you think they let machines with sensitive information use the same Windows Update you are installing in your smelly, little, dark garage room between writing clueless posts like this then you're trully out of your leage commenting here.

FYI if someone manages thousands of Windows XPs and Vistas - IE obviously proves it - then they []must be using at LEAST System Center Essentials (more likely SC ConfigMan + OpMan etc) which makes it INHERENTLY IRRELEVANT which browser they update via System Center deployments.[/b]

MIck is right [b]and the only thing State Dept can claim is that they are looking into what this switch would mean, nothing else - certainly not that it would be more expensive[/b] especially if you factor in the cost savings when someone can freely move his profile between different operating systems (yes, State Dept, like many other giv bodies, also uses other OSes than Windows.).


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By onelittleindian on 7/17/2009 11:24:02 AM , Rating: 5
Neither you nor Jason know anything about support costs at a large corporation or government entity. The actual purchase cost of the software is generally only a few percent of the total support and maintenance costs. Adding a second browser solution would greatly increase costs, no matter how good or bad that second browser was. There isn't any room to question this. You've got to train people on both platforms, support multiple images, deal with more patches, handle an extra set of tech support problems, etc etc etc etc.

You're also wrong about the State Dept. Their client computers (excluding a few mainframe environments) are all Windows.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/17/09, Rating: -1
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By borismkv on 7/22/2009 10:52:56 AM , Rating: 2
Obviously you've never worked with Government IT.

I'm a Security Analyst for a government contractor. I get to actually see how sensitive information is protected. It's called SIPRNet. Go look it up. And guess what, *all* of the Army's Windows Server infrastructure pushes out updates with WSUS, which uses that same Windows Update that everyone else uses. The only difference is that the Government's ISP, DISA, maintains the primary WSUS servers, which push out updates downstream after testing.

Most sites don't use System Essentials because very few people in the military know how to use it or even know that it exists. The cost of the software suite is an additional factor. System Essentials *gasp* costs money in *addition* to the implementation costs required to successfully use it.

Until Mozilla is willing to package Firefox (and its updates) as MSI files for distribution by Active Directory, and develops a centralized update system for it, it's always going to be beaten in the enterprise space by what is included with Windows and updated through WSUS. It's that simple.

And yes, I know it's possible to package Firefox in an MSI, but that, again, costs time which costs money.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By Sazar on 7/22/2009 1:51:31 PM , Rating: 2
I have noticed people's fanboyism really erupt when anything negative (even if it is FACTUAL and CORRECT) is said about Firefox :)

In my corporate environment, many tools simply do not work with FF or Chrome or any other browser. I can still use those browsers but the fact is if we migrated or tried to make it multi-platform, we would have a lot of capital expenses involved. Plus, IE8 just runs more stable on my corporate image.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By mleigh on 7/24/2009 5:31:40 PM , Rating: 2
Here is an experience of government IT policy that I think is rather representative. We had an image analysis need for a current project. I suggested using ImageJ, as it was open source, free, cross-platform, and it was quite successful in a previous task where we had to process images from a stubborn, proprietary program. Instead, my coworker chose a $5000+ specialized image processing application. However, when it came to doing the actual work, I used ImageJ and a few simple macros.

Now, we also needed to do some modeling. He suggested another modeling package costing $5000+, while I suggested using some free modeling software specific to our task developed by another government agency. He had seniority, so we spent the money even though our project was running low. But, in the end it was me who did the modeling on software I did not want to use.

However, it gets better. He was just promoted.

It is this mentality which pervades government IT. Some higher-up decides not to include a browser that is more secure and functional than IE, and it is the users that have to figure out some way around the red tape.

I'm glad that borismkv brought up SIPR. The quickest way to stop progress on a project is to make it classified and put it on SIPR. I've had better luck putting things on a classified laptop, and have the participants work on it one at a time. It once again shows the regressive government IT mentality.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By InsaneScientist on 7/19/2009 6:30:55 PM , Rating: 5
As a reasonably experienced network admin, I gotta call you out on this one...

You're probably right, they wouldn't use Windows update... they'd be using WSUS. (and before anyone who doesn't administer these systems asks why, since SMS/SCCM is far more capable that WSUS is, SCCM runs it's Windows updates through WSUS)

Because of the group policies that Microsoft designs and implements for Internet Explorer plus the WSUS infrastructure that any corporation probably already has set up for patching Windows to begin with, (not to mention the Internet Explorer Customization Wizard) it's incredibly simple to administer IE without needing an SCE or SCCM infrastructure in place. (Which I've done at several job sites)

Now, I will concede that running SCE or SCCM (the latter of which I do at my primary job site - a school), which they probably are, simplifies the task of administering Firefox incredibly, but even then it's still not quite as easy as IE, though close enough to be easily manageable.

On another front, there's the added support cost of dealing with pages that don't work in Firefox, especially on a corporate intranet.
Take OWA (Outlook Web Access - the web portal for Exchange, for those who don't know) for example: it simply does not work properly in its advanced configuration with Firefox - only IE - at least until exchange 2010 :D
I don't know if sharepoint works properly in Firefox, yet (haven't managed to get around to setting that one up), but it wouldn't surprise me if that was an issue too.
And then there are the multitude of sites on the internet that don't display properly with firefox but do with IE.
All of that is additional support cost for the IT department, just so a handful of people can have a different browser.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for choice. I use Firefox myself and could never use anything else due to the extensions that I'm running, and I'm evaluating the best way to put a Firefox package together to deploy, at least to the computer labs, at the school I administer...
However, to claim that introducing Firefox into a centrally managed corporate environment doesn't incur any additional cost is naive.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/21/2009 1:48:22 PM , Rating: 2
Office Live runs on the most recent iteration of Sharepoint. That alone kills Firefox in many corporate environments. Sharepoint is gaining traction as the defacto repository at many companies.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/24/2009 12:22:39 PM , Rating: 1
Ummm have you actually used these?
FYI: Sharepoint works fine in Firefox (since v2 IIRC.) So doees Office Live as far as I know (I don't use it as it's nothing but a crappy copycat of Google Apps and others.)

Ahh and no, actually SP is not really gaining any "traction" beyond already MS-only mega-corporate networks.
OTOH that could happen when 2008 R2 Server ships but only if MS mananges to finaly put out a non-clunky, non-shitty, simplified setup and management, without the usual useless, nonsensical, lame, annoying, overcomplicated web of tangled shit aka the bad joke 'Sharepoint & IIS7 et al setup and management'...


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By mleigh on 7/24/2009 4:10:53 PM , Rating: 2
Honestly, not using Firefox (or Opera or Chrome) due to OWA? That is like saying "don't fly in airplanes because we have roads." Both OWA and Outlook are a huge step down from GMail. If you have users accessing OWA, it means you need a better email system. I know, because I use OWA to access my government email, and I am extremely mad at the idiots who set up such a counterproductive system.

I think one of the big problems in governments and large corporations today is the "Outlook mentality." Outlook Calender emphasizes staying busy, and keeping track of time, but not on effectively using your time to accomplish your goals. Outlook is actually a very poor time management and collaboration tool. Yet it is "standard," so it is forced on the users.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/17/09, Rating: -1
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By nidomus on 7/18/2009 5:10:31 PM , Rating: 3
Dude, wash the sand out of your vagina.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/20/09, Rating: -1
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By omnicronx on 7/17/2009 12:52:35 PM , Rating: 3
Firefox has come a long way Tomz, i know of a few places that completely turn off automatic ff updates and send out their own update packages centrally, exactly the same as IE. Sure the domain controls are not there, but that was not the state departments argument. They have a choice of which browser to use, and apparently its not that hard to maintain.

Furthermore this is a blog and he did put the word expensive in quotes, which usually signals that it has another meaning.

As for Hilary, its not like Mick asked the question, someone else did, he is merely reiterating a question that was asked.

In the end we are talking about the state department here, while I do not necessarily think it is a good idea to roll out Firefox in this kind of environment, I don't think that 'its too expensive' is a valid reason. It seems to me someone merely caught them napping. This is a great way to raise an issue, which was probably why they went after Hilary directly.

As for onelittleindian's comment, yes it would be more costly, but I think you are greatly over exaggerating. Why on earth would they have two images with different browsers? They would probably deploy both and give the users a choice (while pushing out updates to all machines regardless of whether they use it or not). As for training, I think you are kidding yourself if you think they have a big support staff for their current browser I.E, so why would you think it would be required for FF. Users don't need training either, a browser is a browser, they are not fundamentally different to the point where users would require training.

My biggest argument vs the use of FF is domain controls and what you can and cannot lock out, especially in an environment like the State Department (yes there are some tools out there, but they are still in their infancy), I just don't buy the 'cost' factor as being the real issue here.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/17/09, Rating: 0
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By omnicronx on 7/17/2009 1:36:34 PM , Rating: 2
Active Directory/Group Policy of course.. There is really no debating that it is much easier to control IE in a domain environment than FF. FF has frontmotion, but as I said, it is in its infancy.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/20/2009 11:40:27 AM , Rating: 2
PS: and since we are at it I'm eager to learn just what is it that you cannot control via GPOs in FF especially when everything in FF is stored in a (text) file, per profile...?


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/20/2009 11:42:44 AM , Rating: 2
PS2: ahh I just noticed you even know about FrontMotion - nice; then I'm seriously curious just what is it that you cannot do...?


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By kattanna on 7/17/2009 1:58:10 PM , Rating: 5
now this is awesome..

quote:
Elaborate, please - what is this lack of "domain control" (whatever it means) you're talking about?


coming from the same person who crys...

quote:
if you weren't hopelessly clueless about managing large-scale deployments you'd know


so.. you "know all about large scale deployments"? but dont have a clue about domain control???

LOL man.. thanks for my days laugh.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By SilthDraeth on 7/18/2009 11:41:20 AM , Rating: 2
I LOL'ed.

He sounded like a clueless troll, and proved it.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/20/09, Rating: -1
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By T2k on 7/20/09, Rating: -1
RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By Fenixgoon on 7/18/2009 12:59:18 PM , Rating: 2
Yep, the undersecretary is right. I asked one IT guy why the govt used IE instead of FF and he basically said that it's easier to use IE, which the majority of people know, than to switch over to FF, have people learn the program (albeit it's not much different), and to administrate over a second program. it just creates more hassle for the IT dept without much, if any, gain.

I still like FF better than IE, but I understand why the govt would choose to use IE across all systems.


RE: What Are You Smoking, Mick?
By mleigh on 7/24/2009 3:53:38 PM , Rating: 2
The person asking the question clearly knew and liked to use Firefox. If he was an experienced user he probably also used a variety of extensions to speed his work. Preventing him and other intelligent users from installing free, secure software that will increase their productivity is stupid and fiscally irresponsible.

The sad part is that these incidents of mindset lock-in are not limited to the state department. It is, unfortunately, typical of many government agencies and big businesses. It is like IT puts a big set of blinders on when it comes to the needs of intelligent, knowledgeable, and innovative users.


By Chaotic42 on 7/17/2009 8:23:30 PM , Rating: 2
I can't speak to the ease of maintaining a browser as I don't work in IT, but expecting the Secretary of State to be able to argue about Firefox vs Internet Explorer is asking too much. Sure, we know the basics (and as the comments have shown, many of us don't know all of the technicals), but this browser issue is beyond insignificant compared to what she *really* needs to know about. Most of us are tech people, and while the issue may be somewhat important to us (I personally just use IE), that's because it's our industry and/or hobby.

Expecting her to *care* is just silly.




By mleigh on 7/24/2009 2:27:51 PM , Rating: 2
The state department needs Zotero, and thus it needs FF. Right now, Zotero is simply the best software tool for literature research at any price, and nothing else comes close. Zotero runs on FireFox, but is incompatible with IE. So, there is a huge, compelling need for the State Department, and many other paper-pushing government organizations, to upgrade to Firefox.

Those who say that IE is equivalent to FireFox are clueless. Making the effort to distribute a real tool that helps with real work such as Zotero is the job of IT.




By Casual Observer on 7/19/2009 7:06:03 AM , Rating: 1
Is their political judgment as impaired?




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