Software

I wonder if Baltimore County Superintendent Joe A. Hairston thinks of the countless hours, sleepless nights and often thousands of dollars spent by families with children with mental and/or learning disabilities when undergoing the extensive individualized education program (IEP) process to obtain services to educate their special needs children ( "Baltimore County schools did not seek competitive bids for software contract," Feb. 9). Families are expected to put out multiple "bids" for even the most basic of services.

The Baltimore County school system has paid a Georgia software company hand-selected by Superintendent Joe A. Hairston at least $4 million over the past decade without seeking competitive offers from other companies. In doing so, procurement experts say, the school system did not follow commonly accepted purchasing practices that would have required the system to fully explore whether similar products were on the market. Concern about the lack of transparency in the school system's business practices has been growing among county lawmakers for the past year, since they began questioning the ethics of another deal that Hairston struck with a colleague.

A Canadian company said Wednesday it struck a deal to buy Metastorm Inc., a Baltimore-based provider of business software to government and commercial clients all over the world, for $182 million in cash. Open Text Corp., based in Waterloo, Ontario, makes management software for thousands of commercial and government customers. The company said it was buying Metastorm, which makes business process analysis and management software, for its "complementary technology and expertise," according to a news release.

As a Baltimore County Public Schools teacher and happy user of the Articulated Instruction Module (AIM), I read your opinion of Superintendent Joe A. Hairston's handling of the development of the software, and I take issue with your analysis ("Questioning AIM," Dec. 13). You analogize the relationship of AIM developer Barbara Dezmon to Bill Gates if Mr. Gates worked for IBM. In your example, Mr. Gates' employer is in the business of creating and selling software; that's their main mission.

Baltimore County School Superintendent Joe A. Hairston acted within his authority when he signed an agreement that allowed an assistant superintendent to gain financially from the sale of an online grading program created in part by school system employees, according to an attorney for the board of education. Attorney Andrew W. Nussbaum told board members Tuesday that he believed there was nothing in the law that prohibited Hairston from signing the 2007 agreement that allowed then-Assistant Superintendent Barbara Dezmon to use system staff to turn her paper-and-pencil idea into a computer software program.

The Next Things in tech tools are born in rooms such as this one at the American Can Company in Canton, amid laptops, Starbucks cups and Aquafina bottles, amid 20- and 30-somethings working in groups or alone to the sounds of keystrokes and soft conversation. This is the Baltimore Hackathon, the first ever, in which computer cognoscenti step out of their electronic communication worlds and gather to share ideas and physical space, pitting projects against each other in competition for cash prizes.

Deborah A. Rice, a former software designer and volunteer, died Monday of head and neck cancer at her Timonium home. She was 42. Deborah A. Budacz, the daughter of a steamship executive and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Towson. After graduating from Towson High School in 1985, she earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Loyola College. Mrs. Rice went to work for Century Computing, a Laurel software development company, as a member of a team that developed software for certain control systems used on the NASA space shuttles.

I've just spent two days in training on a system that generates business reports, and I understand so much more about the power of my company's particular tool and its application in my job. I also have a really bad headache from glancing at the teacher's screen up in front of the classroom and then back at my monitor for the better part of six hours each day. But here's the thing. Now I really want a Janet's World Home Management Database. Why, the JWHMD already has the requisite long and unmemorable acronym — it will fit in perfectly in the IT world.

Arnold Bennett "Arnie" Cushing, co-founder of a computer software company that specializes in serving the restaurant industry, died Sunday from complications of Parkinson's disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 58. Mr. Cushing was born and raised in Norwood, Mass., where he graduated from Norwood High School in 1970. He earned a bachelor's degree in zoology in 1974 from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and later earned a master's degree in computer engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.