languages, egovernment, international relations, public administration, and other stuff
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Support for Katrina Victims
With so many dislocated people, websites are popping up to offer help and assistance.
Communications Problems in New Orleans
The biggest problem facing authorities, they said, was an inability to
communicate.
With a little more training and protocol, perhaps we can finally solve that problem here.
NAIS, SPR, NASA, and RSS Library
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Monday, August 29, 2005
Wireless State, Untethered Nation
Intel is really pushing wireless government with its Digital Communities initiative.
With Hurricane Katrina hitting so hard, take a look at the websites of the cities that were impacted.
- Mobile's site says nothing of the hurricane.
- Biloxi has a Q and A with the mayor answering questions about the city's response. Their Storm Preparedness Center has a news button that opens up a Google search with a lot of stuff about Hurricane Camille.
- Gulfport, which seems to have been hardest hit is completely offline.
- New Orleans' city website is also unavailable.
- The State of Louisiana does have some useful information on their homeland security portal.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
IT Consolidation in Indiana
This is not the first time that Daniels has targeted IT consolidation to create efficiencies. While he was the Director of OMB in 2002, he stated,
Redundant systems make it difficult to find and comment on the large number of proposed regulations and create performance gaps in the form of reduced customer service and lead to duplicative spending. Consolidating technology investments will better serve citizens by decreasing existing islands of automation and minimizing government costs.I like Daniels approach to government, outlining very specific initiatives with very specific efficiency goals and tracking progress regularly.
The IOT is using CIMS for billing just as we are in Utah.
Another interesting note: The Indiana Telecommunications Network (the WAN for state and local government in Indiana is operated by the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System (IHETS).
Open Source PBX
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Posts from Utah
Speleonet, a blog about spelunking, posts some comments about the tragic deaths in a cave on the face of Y Mountain near Provo, UT. I used to explore caves and mines in the area when I was a teenager.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
GJXDM Virtual Help Desk
Blogwatch: PMThink! Project Management Thought Leadership
Utah IT Consolidation Issues
Although it may not appear like a lot is happening related to the consolidation that is not the case if you are in the middle of it. Five transition teams have been formed in the following areas: administration, policy and planning, service level management, solutions delivery, and infrastructure. They are now working at a frenetic pace to come up with the plans and structures for a new organization to ensure that Utah continues to fill its niche as a technology leader.
Meanwhile, there are still a lot of tactical things going on. I am still reviewing over 500 IT projects that address issues like statewide GPS, egovernment, broadband wireless, and government efficiency. Many are already moving forward and keeping the state's IT workforce quite busy.
Back to Dougall. In another post, he writes,
Blogging is still cutting edge for most citizens, but will grow in importance and effectiveness, particularly here in Utah, perhaps the most connected state in the nation.Blogging has certainly found a place here among politicians. Karen McCandless, who is on the Orem City Council, has started to blog. She is up for reelection this fall.
Monday, August 22, 2005
- For potential immediate savings, departments should take an inventory of software purchases and software renewals in the Fiscal Year 2004-2005 and implement open source alternatives where feasible.
- Incorporate open source software as a viable alternative to any software procurement.
According to the recommendations, "savings could range from several hundred thousand dollars to millions."
A lot was made of this recommendation when it came out in places like CNET and ZDNet, but little has been heard since then. Clark Kelso and Massachussetts CIO, Peter Quinn, spoke at LinuxWorld recently, but based on this photo, there wasn't much interest.
California Performance Review
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Information Security and More
Managers from the Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection visited Utah this week to look at the situation with Skull Valley. KUED has developed this online resource for tracking the Skull Valley situation. Although a few members of the Skull Valley Goshutes are in favor of storing the nuclear rods on the reservation, it is apparent that many are not. The Shundahai Network is a group of indigenous tribes that are fighting the transport of nuclear wast to Native American tribal lands. Skull Valley is just over the hill from the US Army's Dugway Proving Grounds which some are claiming is the new Area 51.
The NASA Earth Observatory has developed a fascinating way to view atmospheric ozone levels over time (you specify the criteria).
FBI Director, Robert Mueller, in his recent testimony to Congress about the FBI's need for an intelligence service, also commented on the agency's progress with its information systems. Mueller has the FBI's new "killer app" Sentinel on schedule to be completed in four years. Senators would like to see it done earlier. The Sentinel RFP was released a couple of weeks ago. Sentinel is a case management system. Case management systems are all over government. In fact, we are developing several right now, including one that will be used throughout the state and is being supported by the Utah Prosecution Council. Core.gov outlines some common issues that are found in case management systems and presents an outline showing common items in the potential life cycle of a case. OMB and DOJ have created a Case Management Common Solutions Program.
This index of CORE.gov component projects (MS Word doc) is getting longer all the time and has some great ideas that could be leveraged by state governments as well.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
State Children's Protection Registries generate a little controversy
The School Technology Leadership blog places Utah and UEN on the "cutting edge" of technology.
"Technology we Blog" discusses the cooperation between Virginia Tech and Turbowave, a local Utah company. We have been researching a potential deployment of Turbowave technology to determine whether it might be a potential fit for the broadband wireless network that we are hoping to deploy here.
Ignore RSS?
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Russell Klein, with the Utah Office of Education just received the "Champion of Digital Literacy" award.
China continues to make advancements in scientific research and development. Business Week reports that U.S. trained researchers are leading the charge. Here's the numbers. The time that I spent as a Chinese linguist keeps me interested in this. When I was at the University of Washington, I spent some time working with one of the first developers of a Chinese word processor. They've certainly come a long way since then.
UITA's Richard Nelson has been appointed president-elect of CRITA.
I hate to be left behind. While we're trying to upgrade a few connections to 2.5 GHz / OC48, the Merit Network in Michigan is now rolling out OC48 or 10 Gbps service.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The National Journal on UTOPIA
It is difficult to see information compromised like the employee records that were exposed in a recent security incident at the University of Utah. The University has a well-trained security team that works hard to maintain a high level of security. Their response was quick and thorough and aims to help those who might have been compromised.
Good luck to Maine in their efforts to develop a consolidated emergency communications network. These things always tend to become at least a little contentious.
Jim Stewart suggests that every user become the system administrator for his / her machine in order to maintain security.
Four states have reported impacts from the Zotob virus that seems to be running around wildly. According to the Internet Storm Center, "CNN reported a worm outbreak this afternoon involving their network, ABCNews, NYTimes, as well as Capitol Hill." The patch is available from Microsoft.
CIO Magazine presents "The Bold 100" in its current issue, a list of CIOs who they deem to be leaders and innovators. It looks like 8% come from government.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Proactive Asset Management
Here's a few links:
Good implementation will not only allow us to track and report assets and maintain licensing compliance, but will enable us to significantly enhance end-user support, better provision server and storage requirements, improve system security, make wiser purchases, optimize server capacity and begin to implement superior system integration structures including grid computing and storage virtualization.
The state has already begun to implement more proactive asset management with vehicles and facilities using excellent packages (Peregrine Fleet Focus and Maximus Facility Focus). It's time to get serious about IT assets as well.
On another note, we should keep in mind Ramon Padilla's advice as we begin to create a portfolio management structure for DTS.
Utah CIO Stephen Fletcher has been appointed to the UITA Board of Trustees.
Wisconsin is spending $65 million a year with state contractors. Some legislators are saying that is too much. They are pushing to internalize much of this work, using state employees at a much lower cost.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
New Vulnerability Database
Renmin Ribao (Peoples Daily) now reports that China now has over 10,000 gov.cn government portal websites. This is a 47% increase in 2004 alone. At the same time, the Chinese government has pressured Microsoft to censor its MSN sponsored blog space in Chinese. In conjunction with censorship, China is also pushing a "real name" identification system which would prohibit the use of aliases when posting material to the internet.
Friday, August 12, 2005
ZDNet Government
There has been a lot of interest in ITIL here in Utah and we have implemented many aspects of it. According to a blog post on ZDNET Government, Wisconsin and Virginia have taken the lead in ITIL.
The site also features lots of content from former Utah CIO Phil Windley.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Michigan Information Technology Center
Here's an interesting presentation from Ford given at Merit's June 2005 annual conference.
Continuing the Transition
- Service Level Management
- Policy and Planning
- Infrastructure
- Administration
- Solutions Delivery
- Organization
- Security
We are exploring critical uses for multi-factor authentication and improving the way we are classifying data as part of our security project. This will be very important if DTS is expected to ensure the highest level of security required for agency data. I came across this Biometrics Catalog sponsored by the National Science and Technology Council.
This report, Planning for and Responding to Threats to the U.S. Homeland, was created from the 35th IFPA-Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy and Policy. The conference is supported by the Fletcher School for International Diplomacy. The school was created at the bequest of Austin Barclay Fletcher (a descendent of our common ancestor, Robert Fletcher, who arrived in Massachussetts in about 1630 and was one of the original founders of Concord).
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Atmospheric Vortex Engine
My brother is creating a large atmospheric vortex engine while he is on sabbatical from Intel. Here is a video clip of the model that he built on his back deck.
His daughter has designed a whole series of mazes that she shares under the heading "Segovia Mazes." These are pretty nice. Her latest creation is shown at the right.
Friday, August 05, 2005
Al Sherwood Starts a new Blog
Al was recently quoted in a recent Government Technology magazine article concerning states portal deals with NIC and Bearing Point. He speculates on how the IT consolidation might impact its relationship with NIC as a service provider:
"The question then becomes, 'If everybody is one operation or organization, then who's going to do the work?'" he continued. "Are you going to do it internally? Are you going to outsource part of it? How are you going to coordinate that so it's efficient? To some extent, it changes the rules of the game."Bringing existing, separate contracts and the outsourcing relationships
created by smaller agencies into the newly created central IT shop creates an unknown, Sherwood said, and it's not certain whether the results will be more outsourcing, less outsourcing or closer coordination of outsourcing."
Former Utah CIO Phil Windley, writing for ZDNet, questions the value of the national sex offender registry. Twenty-two states provide data for the registry.
LANL blogger, Doug Roberts, is in the news again; this time in Federal Computer Week.
Connie White, who has been serving as a Public Service Commissioner, has just been tagged as the new Director of the Division of Public Utilities. As the former director of the Department of Commerce, she has plenty of experience to move aggressively into this new responsibility.