One of the first things you’ll learn upon entering a university Economics 101 class is that “There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.” Even so, you can’t just stop eating; but this is what seems to be going on with the State Department’s provision of web browsers for its employees.

Jim Finkle, a frustrated employee who recently moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, submitted a question during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s town hall event held on July 10. Finkle asked Clinton to “please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox.”

Clinton deflected the query to her Under Secretary, Patrick Kennedy, who answered that providing the free browser was, at the moment, an expense question.

“Yes, you're correct; it's free,” Kennedy continued over general laughter, “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.”

The State Department may want to look into the indirect costs of IT maintenance resulting from viruses that are able to penetrate less-heavily-protected browsers like Internet Explorer, as well as efficiency problems caused by workers who are used to a different interface than the one they find themselves examining at the office.

It’s the difference between continuing to eat a lunch of microwave fish sticks because it works and taking the extra few steps to secure a filet mignon, or soy lemongrass for vegetarians.