Setting the Agenda for 2012 and Beyond

I'm looking at the Federal agenda for 2012 as set out a few weeks ago by Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel. This is what I see:

• Cloud
• Mobility
• Modular Development
• Cyber Security

Nothing wrong with this, but it seems to me that for 2012 from a strategic perspective this is looking backward a little.  The federal strategy for cloud was layed out by Vivek Kundra and it was a good one and is moving forward.  Mobility is here, it is a fact. We should already be where it is we're trying to get to.  It is driven by the private economy and we are consumed by it.  We should be delivering services to it and we are so it is a matter really of continuing along a path that is already established.  NASA, for example, has some wonderful iOS and Android apps as well as EPA, TSA, and many others.  Continue to push mobile, that is good, but it is already a well established path prior to 2012.  I'm not sure exactly what all is envisioned with the modular development concept based on this information, but it too seems like a preexisting thing. And cyber security, now that has been water that we all must drink and it's not about to disappear any time soon.  Applying it to the cloud environments we are moving to is something that must be adopted to and incorporated ASAP as well as a new approach that is focused on a better understanding of threats and vulnerabilities.

The 2012 strategic agenda that I am looking at is more like this:

• The Internet of Things
• Semantic Web
• Artificial Intelligence
• The Social Web, eDemocracy, and the Explosion of Knowledge

I know that these concepts have been around for a while as well, but beginning in 2012, we have ways to leverage them as never before to dramatically impact government.  I'd love to hear your ideas.

Best of Digital Government in Utah 2011

It's time to move on to 2012 and it's now been ten years since I started posting the best of digital government in Utah.  I started this blog on Radio Userland in 2002 and moved it to Blogger in 2005. Every year, I've done an annual review of our digital progress in Utah State government. Here's some of the best of 2011.

1. The new Utah.gov. In June, we introduced a completely new look to Utah.gov. Although it was much more focused on search, the new portal also introduced a single page design that included new infographics, integration of social media, and an enhanced news format, along with new geolocation and contextual services. After being ranked #1 among state portals by the Center for Digital Government in 2007 and 2009, this version of the portal came in second among the fifty states. It also received a Gold Award in the W3 web awards and a Best of Class for government in the IMA International awards. 2011 was also brought new levels of involvement to the Utah.gov domain with at least 1.2 million unique visitors to the site every month of the year.
2. Online Redistricting. The Legislature took its redistricting efforts online this year in an effort to make the process more open and get more public participation. Although the process received some criticism for the way the final decision was made, this was a major step forward as citizens were able to draw up their own map proposals online and share them with those involved directly with the process.
3. Connect Plus. The new Connect portal was created specifically with tablet users online as a way to give them access to the growing body of social media content and news updates produced by Utah government. The site was created with HTML5.
4. Accident Reports Online. This great new service gives citizens access to current accident reports from the Highway Patrol and the Utah Department of Public Safety and will be expanded to include reports from local law enforcement agencies.
5. Google Apps for Government. Utah signed a contract with Google in 2011 to move applications and email into Google's collaborative cloud environment, freeing up resources that were supporting some of these services to do other creative things.
6. UtahPublicEducation.org.  Utah's State Office of Education moved into social media in a big way, not just by creating this constantly updated blog, but also adding Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook services to significantly add to education outreach in the state.
7. UDOT's new mobile app.  Overall, growth in mobile services loomed large in 2011 with many services being added to the mobile portfolio as the use of smartphones in the state continued to explode. UDOT's new mobile app was one of the best and is available for both iOS and Android.
8. MyCHIE. Utah continues to be a leader in supporting the delivery of electronic health record exchange and services, while supporting citizens' rights to exercise greater control over those records.
9. New Statewide Warrants Search.  Another popular service from the Utah Department of Public Safety, this service lets user search the database of over 100,000 warrants.
10. uGATE. UDOT creates a new agency data portal with lots of data in reusable formats, including KML for geodata. Nice addition to data.utah.gov services.

Also see: Best of Digital Government / IT for Utah 2010

Connecting the Data Dots

In our latest Utah Architecture Review Board meeting, we recommended moving ahead with a couple of related initiatives.

1. Add Data as a Service as a key element of Utah CloudPlan 2.0, the next iteration of our statewide cloud computing strategy.
2. Initiate a new process for identifying and cataloguing Enterprise Reference Data.

These two concepts are closely connected.  They also help support the future of Data.Utah.gov, the state data portal that we put into place 2 1/2 years ago.  

Establishing the reference source of enterprise data will enable a more agile and flexible information system development ecosystem which can respond to the needs of state and local government agencies as well as an increasingly integrated citizenry and business community, particularly if this is made available as a cloud-based service.

One of the largest tasks will be the completion of the enterprise reference data catalogue.  Within a state enterprise, there is often a lot of data that is duplicated among agencies and no single source may be identified as the source of truth.  Establishing that, and making sure that all reference data has a mechanism to ensure that it is current will be an important part of the process.  This pool of data resources, combined with the standardized services and automated discovery capabilities will enable much more rapid development of agency applications and services in the future as well as even more opportunity for cross-boundary / enterprise integration.

Another Great Mobile App

A couple of years ago, the Utah Department of Transportation created a new program called TravelWise as a way to get people to think about their commute and travel habits.  The program even set up incentives to encourage carpooling, the use of public transportation, bicycling, etc.  Businesses were encouraged to set up teams that could work together to track ways that they were saving miles and reducing energy demand, as well as helping clean up the air.  Many businesses signed up.  Now, we have a new TravelWise mobile application that lets you enter your saved miles and trips from your smartphone.  This is a great way to track how you are contributing to the program.

These kind of apps often spawn more innovative thinking, so expect to see more mobile apps in the future.  You can find more great mobile apps and services at Connect.Utah.gov.

Working Toward CloudPlan 2.0

It's been two years now since we created Utah's first cloud computing strategy so we are now working on version #2. Several factors come into play as we create the new plan.

• Mobile technologies have improved substantially in just the past two years and many of our agency customers now use mobile devices for a growing variety of purposes.  The need for cloud-based mobile productivity tools is greater than ever before.
• Collaboration has exploded.  In 2009, we had just introduced connect.utah.gov as a way to aggregate our social media content which consisted primarily of about 100 Twitter feeds, a few Facebook pages, and a number of blogs. The amount of dynamic content has exploded in two years and is continuing on a regular upward trend. Now, instead of just aggregating the content, we integrate it throughout Utah.gov.  Cloud-based collaboration and social media tools have become an integral part of many employees daily regimen.
• We completed the consolidation of our data centers and implemented virtualization on a broad scale.  Servers and platforms are now provisioned in close to real time.  Expectations are elevated.  Long software development cycles are generally unacceptable.

We recently completed an RFP for hosted email with associated productivity tools.  Once a contract is in place, the state will begin a process of converting to GMail accompanied with an enterprise implementation of Google Apps.  These productivity tools will bring new opportunities for greater team-building, collaboration, knowledge-sharing, etc., hopefully in ways that will greatly enhance our abilities to deliver world-class digital government services.

SCR & QR Codes

QR Codes are a great technology with lots of potential uses. I love being able to scan an item into my iPhone and then draw comparisons from all over the web. For example, when I go into Best Buy, I will usually scan the QR code of items that I'm interested in and then get price comparisons, product details, customer reviews, and other information about the product from across the web.

We are getting ready to release another state government online services with QR code functionality. In this case, it is the State Construction Registry which tracks activities and information relating to all construction projects throughout the state. It is a system that is widely used by contractors, sub-contractors, lien holders, local government, owners and buyers. The original system went into place just about 5 years ago. The new release, which is set to go live on August 1st will let the contractor print a QR code that can be posted at the construction site. Then, whenever any party needs to update a record associated with the project or get information regarding it, they can start simply by scanning the QR code.

Road Map for the Digital City

On May 31st, New York City's Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Sterne sent me a copy of NYC's "Road Map for the Digital City: Achieving New York City's Digital Future". The document is a masterpiece at portraying the current status of digital government in the city and identifying key, realizable objectives for taking New York to the next level where it will be among the nation's leaders in digital government. This is a very good thing for all of us who live in the egov world. In just a few months NYC has gone from average to a position of leadership which will help drive us all forward. One of the great things about it is that Rachel appears to have the full support of Mayor Bloomberg, "We want New York City to be the nation's premier digital city..." If more political leaders shared that perspective and drive, we would see major improvements not only in the operations of government and the efficiencies that it provides citizens, but we would also see greater improvements in the upward trending of the innovation economy which is absolutely critical if this country is to get out of the funk that it has been in.

Immerse Yourself in Utah.gov 2011

Utah.gov 2011

It's been two years since the state of Utah did a major upgrade to its website and a lot has changed during that time. The internet continues to represent an enormous opportunity for state government. In just five short years, the number of visitors to the Utah.gov domain has doubled, reaching 1.4 million unique visitors in March 2011. The new site has been developed, based on extensive research, to address the most important needs of Utah citizens. It takes into account changes that have occurred in Utah society and with technology. We appreciate the fact that Utah.gov has come to represent a trusted source for all kinds of information.

Two years ago, social media services, such as Twitter and Facebook, were still new to many Utahns, so we provided aggregation services where citizens could discover new agency Twitter feeds and begin to interact. The new site, integrates collaborative features into more aspects of the site so you will find information from Twitter and Facebook, and videos from YouTube integrated into many of the pages of Utah.gov. We continue to use the internet to open up government and make it more accessible through services like Open.Utah.gov. There's also lots of data available in a variety of formats at Data.Utah.gov. Of course, we try to be as open as possible while still maintaining the privacy of our individual citizens.

Still, the most important features on Utah.gov are the numerous services that save time and money for citizens, while bringing tremendous efficiencies to state government as well as the vast libraries of information on topics as varied as healthcare, transportation, caregivers, business creation, and hunting. In 2010, Utah citizens engaged the domain for over 25.1 million interactive transactions, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

Here's a brief introduction to the new site. We hope you enjoy it.

The best and worst states at providing broadband

"The best and worst states at providing broadband" was a recent headline in Government Computer News.

The headline disturbs me, because it implies that places like Delaware, Rhode Island, and Washington, DC, which head the list are doing a much better job at delivering broadband service than some of the rural states such as Kansas, Idaho, or North Dakota. That may be the case... or it might night. The fact is, it is much easier to deliver broadband to a highly urbanized society that it is to someplace like South Dakota, or even Utah. It's like comparing South Korea to Australia. The cost to deliver broadband to remote areas is high and yet we are doing it and hopefully it will all pay dividends.

Project Prologue Documents Early Years of Egovernment in Utah

In 1993, Governor Mike Leavitt, in his Information Highway speech, issued a call for Utah government agencies to open up government data, put government services online, and work together to create an enterprise model for digital government. After 18 years, we have made substantial progress towards these visionary goals. I'm glad to see that some of those initial years are partially chronicled in Project Prologue, a record of the Leavitt administration that is now hosted at Southern Utah University.

For information on information technology in Project Prologue, please visit:
http://leavitt.li.suu.edu/leavitt/category/information-technology/

Not everyone agreed with the Governor's vision for an electronic future. There are still a few around who don't perhaps, but it is the present, as evidenced by 25 million online transactions by Utah government in 2010. I don't think there is a single area in Utah government that hasn't been significantly influenced by it. Here's an article from 1994 that reminds us that there are always those who fight against the inevitable, and they actually did have some success in slowing it down:

IS `HIGHWAY' DESTINED TO BE DIRT ROAD?

The Shuttering of America.gov

Many different voices on Twitter have been praising the State Department for the shuttering of America.gov. They say that it is a good thing the Department will now be spending more time reaching out through social media. America.gov is now a ghost town, a mere relic pointing to an archive of a not so distant past. This once beautiful website, which shared with the world an understanding of what the United States of America is about is gone. Here's what you now see:

This article on The Hill says that it is so the State Department can focus its precious resources on something more important, that is, on its social media efforts.

Personally, I'm having a hard time with this. After all, the purpose of Web 2.0 was to be able to maintain content in a way such that it doesn't have to be maintained all over the place. With a few inexpensive modifications (unlike some of the multimillion dollar websites that we sometimes hear about with the Federal government) America.gov could be cast in a way that it would be fed by the same social media efforts that the State department is talking about emphasizing, whether those are in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Most social media content is portable.

America.gov is too valuable of a property for this to happen. It now looks like the digital version of some of America's blighted urban areas. I hope someone has the sense to bring it back to life where it can prominently integrate with the social media efforts that have replaced it.

Community Broadband Networks

An interesting article in Government Technology magazine refers to a new community broadband map published in March 2011. Just as interesting as who is on the map, is who is not. Several communities in Utah, for example, were among the very first to build community fibre networks. In 1997, a group of neighbors that had begun by networking their homes together for multi-player gaming started a company called Airswitch. The company began branching out to neighboring communities, including American Fork and Pleasant Grove. Eventually, the cities of Springville and American Fork purchased their portions of the network from Airswitch. Four years later, American Fork was looking to sell the network it had purchased. I am still a user of that network which has provided excellent service and high capacity bandwidth at reasonable prices for over 10 years.

The Airswitch experiment continued to spawn interest in community broadband in Utah. Even without these early networks showing on the community broadband map mentioned above, the extent of broadband networks in Utah is well under-represented. UTOPIA was created by 16 Utah cities as a way to bring high capacity network infrastructure to their communities. These cities, which are mostly not represented on the map, include Brigham City, Cedar City, Cedar Hills, Centerville, Layton, Lindon, Midvale, Murray, Orem, Payson, Perry, Riverton, Tremonton, Vineyard, Washington, and West Valley City.

iProvo was another broadband service that was also created initially by the city of Provo and later sold to a private provider. After lining up over 10,000 subscribers, but continuing to lose money, iProvo was sold to Broadweave Networks which today operates as http://www.veracitynetworks.com.

Even though as a general observation, the map shows more community networks than expected, the networks shown in Utah are actually less than expected.

Administrative Control of Utah.gov

Recently, a hacker posted to his website that he will sell administrative control to a number of government websites, including Utah.gov and Michigan.gov. I tried to get my arms around that, and how it might be done. Problem is, Utah.gov is not a simple construct with an administrative console that controls it all so what exactly is this hacker selling for $99. Well, the Utah.gov domain consists of about 6 million pages, over 950 services, dynamic feeds, all somewhat linked together with a central portal which itself is an entire suite of applications built to support the complex array of interactions between citizens and government. It appears that the hacker gained access to a lightly used subdomain that is not even managed by the state's central IT so this was reviewed, patched, etc. With state and federal government websites proliferating as they have, this is almost an unfortunate inevitability as many government employees seek to deploy their content to the web outside the structured professional support channels. I regularly see sites across the country that have injected pages advertising products like cialis and viagra as rogue businesses try to bump up the search engine ratings of their websites through leveraging legitimate government sites. Even organizations with well-structure standards and deployment policies and procedures fall prey to this. With government being as diverse as it is, someone in each organization needs to remain vigilant and aware of these kinds of activities.

Best of 2010 for Digital Government / IT in Utah

Almost time to wrap up 2010 in the way that I've been doing since 2002. Every year, I have created a top 10 list of digital government achievements in Utah government.

1. Utah completes its statewide consolidation of data centers. The consolidation was completed in June 2010 after just 18 months; right on schedule. In total, 38 data centers were consolidated, leaving just two primary data centers, one being primarily for backup and redundancy and being located off the Wasatch Front earthquake zone. The project will save the state over $4 million in ongoing costs. Over 1800 servers were virtualized and moved into these central locations, leaving less than 600 physical servers. A second phase of this project will produce additional benefits. The new consolidated center will also provide an important private cloud component in Utah's overall hybrid cloud strategy.
2. Utah again recognized as the #1 digital state. In August, the Center for Digital Government completed its biennial survey of the states, with Michigan and Utah both receiving "A" grades.
3. New Driver License System with associated online services goes live, lots of new automation added to every terminal. The new system is developed using Google Web Toolkit.
4. A new Jobs.Utah.gov. The Department of Workforce Services begins to accept Open IDs on their new MyCase System with single sign-on for once disjointed services. The economy unit publishes a new blog with the latest economic news.
5. Advances in mobile websites and services. The mobile version of Utah.gov adds location aware services to the state portal.
6. IT recommendations from Governor Gary Herbert's optimization team. The optimization team recognizes the value of technology and online services and encourages agencies to do more.
7. Online Continuing Education for the Division of Professional Licensing (DOPL). This is the beginning of a new trend as the Utah Department of Commerce works with online course providers using a web-based admin console and ties professional license holders directly to course providers for continuing education.
8. Growth of Broadband Use by Utah Citizens. Utah ranks #1 in broadband use among states, confirming the value of its efforts to push more services and interaction online.
9. Use of social media in critical situations. Twitter became a key communications tool in multiple emergency scenarios. When a large wildfire threatened the community of Herriman, city, county, and state emergency responders, along with traditional media used Twitter to get the word out to citizens about evacuation routes, fire conditions, emergency shelters, etc. In December, southern Utah communities were threatened by flooding and emergency responders again used Twitter to get information out to the community at large.
10. Public and Higher Education Added to Transparency Website. The Utah Public Finance Website has added data from education units across the state. This is a significant step forward in meeting the transparency requirements of the Utah State Legislature. While the site itself is much the same as last year, the addition of higher education institution, school districts, and charter school information is a major success.

Preparing for the next five years: checklist

In looking forward to 2011-2015, there are some things that most government IT shops should have done by now. Here's a list of some of those:

• Virtualized 90%+ of all server-based applications
• Created and implemented a social media policy
• Reduced physical server counts by upwards of 60-70%
• Implemented a cloud strategy and begun moving major applications and services to the cloud
• Developed a plan for supporting mobile platforms - smartphones and pad devices
• Planned to support virtual desktop environments
• Developed your first mobile apps and services, along with a mobile version of important websites
• Consolidated data centers with a strong business continuity plan that supports redundancy for all IT critical applications and services
• Have a well-established security structure and auditing process in place for online services and transaction-based applications
• Implemented a first or second phase plan for sharing data on the web (data.gov)
• Have a structure in place that is capable of implementing cross-agency, enterprise applications and services
• Shortened development cycles by 50% or more
• Have processes in place for monitoring and reporting IT performance on a regular basis
• Incorporated GIS as a critical part of your go-forward strategy

Right now, I'm still pondering some of the key initiatives that will drive the next five years. I'll try to post more on that soon.