Chronicles of Narnia

I'm planning to take the kids to the movie this weekend.

Thoughts on Innovation

I meant to do a lengthy post today outlining a plan for creating a comprehensive technology and innovation strategy, but seem to always get consumed in the day to day requirements for support and implementation. I won't get to that.

I ran across this report from Brookings that was published last week that recommends the creation of a "National Innovation Foundation." I certainly agree with three foundational statements:

1. Innovation Is Key to Raising Productivity and the American Standard of Living
2. Innovation Presents a Growing Challenge to the United States
3. Government Must Act to Improve the Innovation Process

In the 1970's, we viewed the 21st century as a space age with incredible progress in the areas of transportation, energy, and communications. We've come the farthest in the area of communication, but our progress has also created some complications. It has also diverted us in many ways. Sometimes we spend more time looking at how cool a technology is than actually applying it in real practical ways that enhance quality of life. And we're still a substantial distance from the kind of pervasive global communications that I might have imagined for 2010 even though the technologies exist to make it a reality. I mean, when you still have large office buildings relying on T1 connections, that's not there.

Our failure to progress in the area of transportation and energy is still our biggest failure and our inability to act sooner may have serious implications for the future. Even with big discoveries in places like Brazil, we will eventually run out of oil. Most peak oil projections show production peaking within the next ten years. Space travel seems to have been on the slide for quite a while now.

So, the question is, will we continue to promote more of the same, small innovations within existing paradigms or something that rocks the world like the internet in the early 90's? The innovation agency proposed by Brookings sounds a little like the USTAR initiative in Utah, a way to work creative ideas and research into business.

The Brookings report says that states have now taken the lead in innovation policy:

"The design of a more robust federal innovation policy must consider, respect, and complement the plethora of energetic state and local initiatives now underway. While the federal government has taken only very limited steps to promote innovation, state governments and state- and metropolitan level organizations have done much more. They have partially filled the gap left by federal inaction. Yet, these entities could do even more, and their current efforts could be made more effective. Federal assistance is needed to help state and regional innovation efforts reach the proper scale and achieve their full potential."

If this is the case, there is a need to more effectively coordinate the spend of taxpayer dollars and reduce duplication. I see that everywhere, within states, between states, and between state and federal. There is a real opportunity to utilize web 2.0 and semantic web collaboration and integration concepts and tools to make this happen.

Europe issued a new communication last week reorienting its i2010 initiative at the midway point. The report stresses the importance of the internet as an essential tool for economies and for peoples daily lives. Key 2008 actions include:

• Develop a broadband performance index and invite Member States to set national targets for high-speed Internet usage to reach a 30% penetration rate among the EU population by 2010;
• Help prepare the information society for the future Internet economy by issuing a Communication on the future of networks and Internet;
• Facilitate the transition to new networks by issuing a recommendation on Next Generation Access;
• Promote the Internet of Things through a Recommendation on RFID, focusing on privacy and security issues;
• Propose measures to ensure a high level of resilience of critical communication networks and information infrastructure (like the Internet) and to guarantee continuity of services;
• Propose a set of actions to facilitate the transition to IPv6.

The report goes on to list legislative and other actions that will be taken beginning this year to reach the 2010 goals, including of course eHealth and the promotion of the public sector as a buyer of innovation services. It is impressive to see that the percent of internet broadband users has almost doubled in two years. Locally, I think we have seen a similar trend. Dialup is just not an option for most internet users anymore.

Today's Tech Read

News of the Day

• Will Oracle locate in Cache Valley?
  

Analysis of the Day

• Dion Hinchcliffe's report on Enterprise 2.0

Event of the Day

• Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco

New Service to Look At

• Yahoo Fire Eagle

Today's Municipal Controversy

• How will Provo deal with the iProvo shortfall?

Energy Report

• Utah explores geothermal potential

Transportation

• Utah still accepting public input on the EW Connector through Lehi
  

A Comparison of various State Services

Here is an interesting look at four different services offered through Utah.gov.

1. Login.utah.gov is the single sign-on service using the Utah Master Directory.
2. Email.state.ut.us is the web client for the State's employee email service.
3. Le.utah.gov is the Legislature's website.

Congress Discusses Virtual Worlds

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce today held a hearing on "Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium." I'll be interesting to hear their comments and summary. The video will be available here.

Laurence Johnson of The New Media Consortium suggests the following:

we need a range of action informed by vision and clarity of purpose. What is needed most are these five things:

• programs that will spur the technical development of the 3D Internet;

• programs that add capacity to the woeful state of our information infrastructure and bring it to the communities and neighborhoods that currently have no or very poor access to broadband services;

• policies that require data and cellular networks to deliver the bandwidths and speeds needed to easily access these technologies;

• programs to ensure that educational institutions and students at all levels have the resources required to take full advantage of the potential of the 3D web; and

• programs and policies to encourage entrepreneurs to develop effective business models for this new frontier.

Beyond those vitally important actions, what is further needed is for government to engage the technology, to model effective uses of virtual worlds, and to promote programs and services that truly tap its potential to bring people together.

Audio is also here.

NMC's Horizon Report of Emerging Technologies

2008 Federal eGov Report

Although it was released a week ago, the 2008 Federal report on eGovernment just caught up with me, all 402 pages of it. I'm interested in the new DAIP portal that will go live in December 2008. This new clearinghouse is a central portal from which...

disaster victims may obtain information regarding Federal disaster assistance, State and local government programs, and private sector sources for disaster assistance.

Looks like something I should add to the state's egov collaboration plan / web 2.0 strategy. Here is a list of the service partners. This report is also a great update on the progress of the key egov initiatives.

Top 10 Issues of Concern for 2008

Yesterday, the Utah Foundation published a list of 10 issues of concern for the State of Utah in 2008. A new site, UtahPriorities.net has been established by the Foundation to share information on these issues. The site includes a forum for discussing the issues. Governor Huntsman spoke at the meeting where the issues were presented. With over 2.6 million pages of content, Utah.gov provides lots of plans, data, and other information on each of these issues.

Utah Foundation poll's top 10 issues of concern for '08

1. Energy issues, including utilities and gas prices

Governor's Energy Policy, Gov. on Energy Security, Hydropower Wave of Utah's Energy Future, Future of the Utah Coal Industry, Utah Energy Efficiency Strategy, Geothermal Resources in Utah, Wind Energy
Lots of energy resources are available, including maps and data of untapped mineral, wind, and geothermal sources. We should provide this data in formats that can be reused to add value, including kml.

2. K-12 education

K-12 Future Challenges, Designing the 21st Century Classroom, Weber School District Strategic Plan
UEN provides a common forum for school districts and will soon upgrade the network backbone to 10gig. New strategies for learning should be promoted. I understand that Utah's Electronic High School has some new innovations planned. I hope these include use of more advance collaboration tools and resources.

3. Taxes and government spending

Last month, the Legislature passed a bill that requires the state to make its financial records available to the public in a higher degree of detail.

4. Health care

Virtual Healthcare Interactive, Pandemic Flu Preparedness, eHealth Initiative, Evolution of Public Health Systems: Enterprise Approaches
Utah should continue its quest to be a leader in eHealth. I think that Doctor Sundwald has a good vision here.

5. Immigration

Immigration Overview, Senator Hatch on Immigration-related Crime, Immigration Is Us

6. Crime and security

BCI Crime Stats, Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice
Utah is sharing data through CrimeReports.com. This mashup provides a real-time glance at criminal activity. Over 35 local government agencies are participating.

7. Water supply and quality

Water Supply and Reservoir Storage, Utah Water Science Center, Utah State Water Plan
We must remember that we live in a desert. Our water agencies have done a great job at real-time monitoring of water resources. An example is the Sevier River Water Users Association. Eventually, we will be forced to conserve.

8. Environmental issues, including air quality and pollution

2007 Report on the Environment, Stegner Center

9. Transportation and traffic

Transportation Systems Planning and Programming, Traffic Volume Maps, St. George City Traffic Information Exchange
We should continue to improve real-time traffic monitoring systems and get somehow get ahead of the transportation planning cycle.

10. Dealing with Utah's growth

Envision Utah, Quality Growth Commission

Real Estate Activity in Utah

Heidi Rodeback points out this report from Commerce CRG summarizing real estate activity in Utah. The report has dozens of interesting indicators such as this chart showing the decline of retail vacancies over the previous 5 years. This kind of data is critical to city and state planners as well as industry. We should be doing a much better job of consolidating the information that we have and making it available in usable formats that would really help businesses in planning. Something that is still severely lacking in our business portal. Maps, social networking and other tools, when combined with such data could dramatically improve the whole process. Commerce CRG also has a database of commercial properties available in the state.

NGA has published a new issue paper outlining state strategies to promote angel investment for economic growth.

Foresee Results not Encouraging

According to survey company Foresee Results, satisfaction with E-Government (as measured against US federal government sites), is waning - at its lowest level in three years. It does seem, however, that citizens are still anxious to interact with government as measured by an increase in satisfaction with the e-commerce aspect of Federal websites. Internet user are experiencing a lot of new capabilities available through the internet and expect the same improvements to be available on government websites.

A survey of Federal CIO's from FederalTimes.com shares the following info:

"...only 9 percent of CIOs surveyed said they’ve been in their jobs longer than four years, compared with 29 percent last year."

"The number of CIOs reporting to a secretary or bureau head dropped from 55 percent to about 42 percent between 2006 and 2007. At the same time, the number of CIOs reporting to chief financial officers increased to about 24 percent, up from about 5 percent in 2006."

I have NO idea why you would want your CIO reporting to a CFO as opposed to the agency head. Doesn't make any sense to me.

Utah Attorney General broadcasts on UStream about Open Government

Utah Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff now has a UStream Channel. Here is yesterday's press conference on open government:

Alan Mather Comments on eGov 3.0

Alan has been blogging about eGov for about as long as I can remember and has some interesting thoughts under his eGovernment 3.0 post. This will take a little while to absorb and see how it meshes with my own ideas on the topic.

Collaboration Opportunities in Government

To get an idea of the magnitude of the potential collaboration opportunities in government, you could look at any one of hundreds of intergovernmental organizations that provide forums for sharing information and networking. For example, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies lists hundreds of state agency members, interested stakeholders, and organizational partners that all share common interests and face common challenges. The internet offers opportunities for leveraging these communities in ways hardly imagined. In turn, this association is a member of multiple both broader and narrower in scope, such as the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (just look at the list of partners). Web-based networks, like the Wildlife Disease Information Network are just beginning to understand and leverage some of the Web 2.0 concepts that enable organizations like these to accomplish things that have never been done before on such a scale. For example, look at this aggregation of avian influenza surveillance data drawn from the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Early Detection Data System (HEDDS). WDIN has also produced v. 2.0 of their Global Wildlife Disease News Map. KML file is also available so you can port the data into Google Earth. This specific area is on of over 100 collaboration opportunities that I have identified in a draft collaboration plan addendum for our State eGov plan that I want to use in developing our Web 2.0 strategy.

KMZ

I am really anxious to see more government agencies providing GIS information in KML format. The potential for reuse and leveraging of this format is huge. I may have referenced this before, but I think that the Utah Geographic Survey continues to improve what they offer such as this file. And you can view in multiple tools, including Google Maps and Google Earth.
Speaking of maps, I am really quite impressed with Yahoo's new beta of India. It still has some issues, including slow reaction, but the resolution is pretty good, as you can see from this image of Salt Lake stadium in Kolkata. The map includes a Bengali language option. Utah has been working to strengthen economic ties with India and this map is a great resource.

Has eGov delivered?

According to Gartner's Richard Harris, as quoted on C-Net, "e-gov [has] failed to deliver on expectations, and the development of "Gov 2.0" will be prompted as much by governments needing to replace legacy applications as any attempt at nurturing greater interaction with their citizens." Oh, has it now? I need to understand where it has failed. Perhaps I misread the expectations, but we are only just over 10 years into the egov revolution and I see thousands of online services delivering value of time and money savings to citizens. I also see increased connectedness of citizens to government and much more active dialogue on all kinds of public issues. Citizens search for government services and information and their searches are rewarded with services and information. Certainly, there is more that government can do, but the revolution is still just beginning and the pace is increasing, particularly in the past few years. In Utah, some services are provided only on the web, at a cost much less than if it were provided through traditional channels. Government is available 24x7, something that certainly did not exist before. In both January and February of 2008, we had more unique visitors to the Utah.gov domain than any month previous. As far as legacy applications, most of those were replace around the turn of the millenium. The need now is to better connect them with web services and semantic web architectures. Even though I disagree with this one statement, I agree that government should continue to adapt web 2.0 technologies to the public sector. We are currently developing a web 2.0 strategic plan that will be an add-on to our existing egov plan. Many government employees are anxiously moving forward with web 2.0 efforts and I don't expect that to slow. We must, however, be focused on doing things that add value to citizens and fit within the bounds of our legal and financial limitations.

Enterprise Wide Approaches to Public Health Systems

This whitepaper, Evolution of Public Health Information Systems: Enterprise Wide Approaches, was published through a consultation with the Utah Department of Health.

Ogden's Blogging

The northern Utah blogging community has grown a lot since I last looked. I would not have known about an effort to incorporate Powder Mountain Town without the Ogden Valley Forum. The Weber County Forum provides a voice for citizens. D Bell of the Utah Wingmen for Property Tax Reform has entered his last blogpost. Even the Mayor of Ogden is into it.

Last Day of the Legislative Session

There is always lots of activity on the last day of the legislative session and today is no exception. House and Senate are both working their way through lots of remaining bills. Seems like half of the legislators are losing their voice today. Good luck to Reps. Clark and Holdaway on regaining their voices. Still waiting to see what happens to HB426 and SB38. 365 bills (one for every day of the year) have passed so far this year.

There were some very good presentations at Network World's IT Roadmap conference I attended yesterday. We are working on ideas to improve what we do locally and sharing some of the best ideas from the conference.

I also learned about Bungee Labs from a Twitter post. Bungee Labs is a SLC-based company that provides a SDDS - Software Development and Deployment as a Service. Here's a good overview from ZDNet.

New NASCIO paper on IT Governance and Business Outcomes with a couple of good Utah contributors.

The US Department of Education has a new map service (see above image) for their School District Demographics System (there's that SDDS acronym again). I just wish you could access a KML file for any map you produced with this ESRI service. That would be really nice.

See the March Issue of Governement Technology for the top Dreamers and Doers in gov IT. Also includes an article on what governments are doing with virtualization. We've been virtualizing servers for 4-5 years now with VMWare. Last night, I sat next to the Citrix rep on the airplane and had a good discussion on their various XEN products.

Clarification: Senator Hickman made some comments with respect to Senate Bill 38 (listen to audio files), Transparency in Government when discussing the Public Meeting Notice website about software developers taking 18 months. Requirements were passed to the developers in October. The development of this site actually took less than 5 months. It is in testing now and will be ready to go live on April 1st as required. Local governments requested a delay so that they can prepare to enter data in the system, train their people, etc. Something like 2,000 public entitities will use the system.

Measuring Performance: The State Management Report Card for 2008

Five states received "A" grades in the area of information in the 2008 version of Governing's performance report. They include Virginia, Washington, Utah, Michigan, and Missouri. We're glad to be recognized among this group. Even with an A grade, there are certainly many things that can be done better and the state is working hard to provide significant improvements to its information systems and processes. I think 2008 will be one of the best years ever in terms of new IT services and initiatives that will produce real benefits for the state's citizenry.

The Senate Site provides more details.

Using Technology to Improve City Government

In the latest issue of Inside Provo, Mayor Lewis Billings discusses how the city is using technology to improve service to citizens with Information Services Director Robert Ridge and Community Development Director Gary McGinn:

Earthquake Aftermath

Fox reports on the situation in Wells, Nevada following a 6.0 earthquake:



Unlike what we have seen from some other state websites, there is still very little information on Nevada.gov other than this announcement that the Governor will visit the area (that was 12:30 yesterday) - no followup about that visit or what citizens can expect. This is not a good example of how to provide information through the state portal. New maps detailing the impact of the quake are available on USGS. The quake was felt by those who were in the building I am in at the time. Hundreds of people reported feeling the quake in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas. You can see from this map that this area of Nevada does not have much history of earthquakes. So, having a 6+ quake here is pretty significant. Some pretty good information on this quake and previous quakes in Nevada, including A Nevadan's Guide to Earthquake Preparedness is found at the Nevada Seismological Lab. As of the moment, however, the Nevada Emergency Management website says nothing about this event.

Utah is in a much more active earthquake zone. According to the Utah Seismic Safety Commission,

90% of Utah's population lives in active earthquake zones. If a 7.5 Richter Magnitude quake were to occur in the Salt Lake City area, it is projected that 7600 people would die and approximately $18 - billion would be lost to physical damage and loss of jobs and economic activity.

The Strategic Plan for Earthquake Safety in Utah was produced in 1995.

Looking at history, it's a matter of time 'til a big one hits here.

Nokia Siemens Study Presents Interesting Correlations on Innovation

The Connectivity Scorecard, a study released last month by Nokia Siemens, draws data from a variety of sources to make observations about how businesses and government use technology to benefit society. The top-10 innovation driven economies, according to this study, are:

1. United States
2. Sweden
3. Japan
4. Canada
5. Finland
6. U.K.
7. Australia
8. Germany
9. France
10. Korea

Here is the study's correlation comparing their connectivity score to national GDP:

USDA Web Soil Survey

I am quite impressed with the granularity of data found on the USDA's Web Soil Survey. I specified a small area of about 180 acres in American Fork, Utah and the tool mapped out eight different soil types. I wonder what percent of potential users of this data / information know that it is available in this format.

Demographics of Health.utah.gov

This chart shows one of the most interesting phenomena on Utah.gov. I have been using Quantcast to analyze the demographics of Utah.gov users. In this case, the criteria was narrowed to health.utah.gov. The thing that really jumps out is the age demographic. This site has more than double the internet average number of users in the 25-34 age category. Even for the domain in its entirety, Utah.gov has an audience that is about 170% of normal for this age group. What does that mean for expectations? Are we meeting the needs of this group which comprise the largest number of users for the site? Things we must think about.

Open Meetings Webcasts in New York State

In case you hadn't noticed, open public meetings in New York State have become a lot more open and a lot more accessible. Governor issued an executive order in 2007 requiring state agencies and public authorities to broadcast meetings subject to the Open Meetings Law on the internet. Consequently, you'll find more webcasts in New York than about any other state.

Comparitive Technology in the States

Benchmarking Connecticut 2007: A Comparative Analysis of Innovation and Technology draws a lot of comparisons between the 50 states on issues like broadband, productivity in the tech sector, and entrepreneurial activity. It's a little bit difficult to infer anything based on this report more than general trends, but it does present some interesting data. The report covers a lot of industries as well as issues like immigration and foreign investment.

New Budget Numbers

Nice budget update on Monday from the Senate Site. And having the chair of Executive Appropriations discuss it provides an appropriate personal touch. Even though the numbers were some $300 million or so short of what was previously projected, I think a lot of states would love to be where Utah is currently. Arizona, for example, is $1.2 billion short. And California has an estimated shortfall of $14.5 billion. Utah, on the other hand, has over $600 million in new money to spend, or refund.

There are a lot of bills this year that require new databases and services. Some of these can help to make government more efficient, but there are many things that we should be automating that we still aren't. Many opportunities still exist to provide better service online. And we need to continue to innovate, as well as market the egov services that we already have. With over 800 online services, we have done quite a bit, but we still have thousands of static pdf forms that we put online. We still have a lot of remnants left from a paper-based approach to things and put things online with the expectation that people are going to print them off in order to generate a process that will ultimately end up back in some kind of electronic format. So, I am not in favor of reducing the overall technology budget. Making it more efficient yes, but hopefully we can reinvest more of the savings that have been gained through technology into new service-oriented initiatives.

Google Streets on the Wasatch

Google Streets now covers most of the Wasatch Front, from Perry to Santaquin (fruit row to orchard town). I can't imagine how many hours were spent imaging so many streets, but I am certainly impressed. Now we can only imagine how this vast amount of data might be leveraged in the future.

Navajo Nation

Because the Navajo Nation is located partly in Utah, I have had the opportunity to meet with a number of their officials on various issues of common interest, particularly with respect to technology. I was interested to see that they now have all 110 chapter houses tied to the internet via OnSat. They also have wifi available at all chapter houses and emergency management personnel have laptops so that they can have internet access anywhere in the vicinity of a chapter house. This has been a big challenge because of the remote nature of many of these locations. Each chapter also has their own website, some of which have the common look as the Navajo Nation site.

• See how the nation is using OnSat for remote connectivity.

They have also put a variety of tools online at eNavajo, such as their Budget Management System.