The state of Massachusetts maintains a general alliance with Israel through multiple collaborations and partnerships. Through the “Massachusetts Israel Innovation Partnership," the state of MA participates in "roundtables" with Israeli officials "to discuss emerging trends in technology, policy, and regulation” and takes part in “visits of delegations" of MA officials to Israel and of Israeli officials to MA, delegations which consist of "representatives from academia, industry, and the political arena." Massachusetts government officials and Israeli state officials also hold joint conferences and exchange programs (mostly around “cybersecurity”), facilitated by organizations including the Consulate General of Israel to New England. In 2016, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed an agreement between the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and the Israeli “cybersecurity” company CyberSpark, committing the state of MA to work together with CyberSpark on “cybersecurity for healthcare."
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Cisco helped build a new data center for the state of Massachusetts. The data center was reportedly meant to "consolidate its [the state's] data center operations."
A 2020 article in CommonWealth notes about Finegold Alexander & Associates: "Finegold Alexander has extensive experience designing justice facilities for the state of Massachusetts and the firm is teaming with HOK Architects, a firm that focuses on correctional facility design that is responsive to the needs of incarcerated women. HOK specializes in 'gender-responsive planning' and has designed inmate housing that allows children to sleep with their mothers." By promising such improved and friendlier prisons, Finegold Alexander helps the state not only to build its prisons but also to whitewash over the inherently violent and cruel realities of caging human beings in them. Finegold Alexander, thus, provides both material and ideological support for the prison system and the carceral state.
Finegold Alexander & Associates was one of the architecture firms which bid on the Massachusetts state project for the design and construction of a new women's prison to replace the state's deteriorating MCI-Framingham. The new prison project was opposed by community members as well as by abolitionist groups such as Families for Justice as Healing (FJAH).
In 2014, weapons manufacturer General Dynamics Information Technology announced that GDIT had "been awarded a contract to develop, implement and operate the Massachusetts Next Generation (NG9-1-1) emergency communications system."
The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination presented to Harvard Law School students at HLS's 2022 OPIA Virtual Networking Reception.
The state of Massachusetts currently has rate contracts with Hewlett Packard, thorugh which municipalities, school systems, and other public entities within Massachusetts can purchase HP products in large quantities at rates pre-negotiated by the state.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) currently holds a 287(g) agreement with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, which is a department of the MA state government. As reported by GBH: "287g agreements allow officers to interview already-detained people in county jails about their immigration status, check the Department of Homeland Security’s databases for information on those individuals, issue detainers to hold individuals set to be released so that ICE can then detain them, and share any information with ICE. They can also recommend and begin the process of deporting individuals."
In the Kleinfelder's proposal for a state contract to build a new women's prison, the firm attempted to whitewash over the inherently violent and dehumanizing realities of caging human beings in prions, highlighting that, if selected by the state of MA, they would create a prison which would include "gender-responsive programming," and boasting that prisons Kleinfelder had previously constructed were designed with "soft colors" and included "dayroom spaces" which let in natural light.
In 2018, the New England-Israel Business Council received a $250,000 grant from the State of Massachusetts for the purpose of strengthening economic ties between Israel and Massachusetts.
Massachusetts government officials and Israeli state officials have participated in joint conferences and exchange programs (mostly around “cybersecurity”) facilitated by groups including the Consulate General of Israel to New England.
HDR was contracted by the state of Massachusetts to provide design and architectural support for MA's $45 million project to construct the Middleton Jail and House of Correction in Middleton, MA.
In 2019, the state of Massachusetts announced another $50 million project to construct a new women's prison at the Bay State Correctional Center in Norfolk, which would replace MA's dangerous and crumbling MCI-Framingham facility. In 2020, the Massachusetts Department of Corrections and the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance selected HDR to from among architectural firms seeking a contract from the state of MA for the "study and design" of this new women's prison in Norfolk, and in June 2021 the Massachusetts Department of Corrections and the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance signed a contract with HDR for the project. In their bid for the contract for the "study and design" of the state of MA's new prison in Norfolk, HDR attempted to characterize their vision for the new prison as "trauma-informed," a characterization which community members rejected as a crass and offensive attempt to whitewash over the violent realities of caging human beings. Leslie Credle, who was incarcerated for five years at the MCI-Framingham, stated in response to HDR's bid for the contract:
There’s no such thing as trauma-informed care in prison. I say that because the atmosphere and environment inside prisons is toxic. When you first walk through the door, you are automatically humiliated, stripped of everything that makes you you ... Even if you have the best built, shiny new jail, the environment and atmosphere are not going to change. You’re traumatizing women every day, inflicting harm on them mentally. We don’t need a new prison. We did a listening tour with 100 formerly incarcerated women. They say prison did nothing for me, nothing to change whatever they thought was wrong.
Formerly-incarcerated community members and allies from the group Families for Justice as Healing (FJAH) wrote an open letter to HDR calling on HDR to step back from the new women's prison project, which FJAH stated is “only intended to destroy black and brown communities." After receiving no response from HDR, FJAH began protesting outside HDR's offices in downtown Boston. Community members leading the fight against the new women's prison HDR is designing have also broadened their fight, are now advocating the MA state legislature pass S. 2030/H.1905, a bill which would place a 5-year moratorium on the "study, plan, design, acquire, lease, search for sites, or construct new correctional facilities" in the state.
Vice magazine reports that in the face of this swelling community opposition against the new women's prison for which they were bidding, HDR "advertised its social listening services in a report submitted to Massachusetts’ Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) in September 2020." HDR's offer to surveil and monitor the activists fighting MA's new prison peaked the interest of Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management Project Manager Emmanuel Andrade, who stated in an email to HDR: “We’re intrigued by how HDR would use this communication practice of monitoring and analyzing online conversations in our project. Can HDR share a few examples of how that has been accomplished in recent projects?”
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Correction Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity is listed as an employer "looking to Hire Salem State Vikings" on the Salem State University webpage advertising the university's 2022 Virtual Job and Internship Fair. (The Massachusetts DOC oversees prisons in the state.)
The state of Massachusetts uses software created by Ultimate Kronos Group (previously known as "Kronos"), as evidenced by the state's audit of the Barnstable County Sheriff's office.
Tufts University has hosted the Office of the Massachusetts State Treasurer and Receiver General, the Massachusetts Trial Court, the Office of the Inspector General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Technology Services and Security to present to Tufts students at the University's 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 general career fairs.
The Office of the Massachusetts State Treasurer and Receiver General presented at a UMass Boston career fair in the Spring 2022.