Another Re-up with NIC

Tennessee has signed a new contract with NIC for 5 years.

Here is the press release announcing Utah's first place ranking by Brown University.

Lake Charles

With Hurricane Rita bearing down on Lake Charles, Louisiana, here is the first thing that it will see on the seaward side of the city. Note all the petroleum storage and industrial complex.

eAdministration Blog

Rafael Chamorro has a new weblog centered on the topic of public administration within the information society. It is in Spanish.

Open Government

A New Utah editorial calls for more openess in Utah government, especially at the local level.

Provo is using computer monitoring systems to ensure that trains do not block intersections excessively.

The University of Utah Hospital is using SoftGrid to introduce efficiencies into desktop and applications management and support. I like what they're doing.

Federal Computer Week publishes another magazine called Government Health IT focused on this specific sector.

The University of Utah is using Tenfold software for its DIGIT lab. DIGIT stands for Digitally Integrated Geographic Information Technologies.

Register Coverage of Urquhart

London's "The Register" recently included an article about Steve Urquhart's campaign against Orrin Hatch. They're interested because of Urquhart's interest in technology which has been documented in his blog.

Brown eGovernment Study Ranks Utah #1

The 2005 version of Brown's annual study on eGovernment rated the State of Utah #1 in digital government. An interesting thing about the Brown study is that each year it seems to add new elements that make it even more comprehensive. Maine and Michigan are two other states with impressive IT programs that made it into this year's Top Five. The study evaluated 1,620 state and federal websites, looking at an impressive list of criteria, including:

...online publications, online databases, audio clips, video clips, foreign language or language translation, advertisements, premium fees, user payments or fees. They also evaluated sites with regard to disability access, privacy policy, security policy, online services, digital signatures, credit card payments, e-mail addresses, comment forms, automatic e-mail updates, Web site personalization, PDA accessibility, quality control, and readability.

For more information, see:

• Brown University’s sixth annual review of digital government
• Full report

Brown also ranked 197 countries with Taiwan ending up on top and Somalia on the bottom. I think its hard to even evaluate Somalia since they have no effective national government with the country being in . Somaliland, which is controlled by warlords in the northern end of the country maintains this English-language site.

Wikipedia Article on Hurricane Katrina

Check out the exceptional coverage by Wikipedia of Hurricane Katrina.

Camp Williams Home to Evacuees

The Utah National Guard welcomed 600 Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Shelter, food, clothing, internet and phone access has been provided as these people attempt to determine their future. Some have already left to try to reunite with other family members. The local media is providing extensive coverage:

• KSL TV
• KUTV
• Deseret News
• Salt Lake Tribune

The Utah Technology Commission will meet today at 9am and get an update on the status of the consolidation effort. Here is the link to the live audio feed.

Utah Joint Information Center

NEWS RELEASE

Date September 3, 2005 Media Inquiry Line: 801-538-3401
Time 4:30 p.m. National Guard Contact:
Lt. Col. Dave Thomas
801-557-5384

Hurricane Evacuees Expected
SALT LAKE CITY ? A JetBlue flight is anticipated to arrive at the Utah National Guard Airbase tonight at 7:11 p.m. There are 152 hurricane evacuees on board who are believed to be from the New Orleans area. This will be the first arrival of evacuees from the hurricane-ravaged area.

Media access will be as follows:

• News photographers will be allowed on the tarmac as the evacuees deplane. However, in order to allow the evacuees to quickly access the screening center, no interviews will be allowed at that point.
• After the evacuees have completed the screening process, reporters and photographers will be allowed access to them as they board the buses for transportation to Camp Williams.
• Tonight, in order to respect the privacy of the evacuees at Camp Williams, media access may be limited and will be directed by the Utah National Guard Public Affairs Officer (PAO) on-site.
• On Sunday, media access will again be under the direction of the PAO
  on-site.

Hurricane Evacuees to arrive in Utah

Utah Joint Information Center

NEWS RELEASE

Date September 3, 2005 Media Inquiry Line: 801-538-3401
Time 4:30 p.m. National Guard Contact:
Lt. Col. Dave Thomas
801-557-5384

Hurricane Evacuees Expected
SALT LAKE CITY ? A JetBlue flight is anticipated to arrive at the Utah National Guard Airbase tonight at 7:11 p.m. There are 152 hurricane evacuees on board who are believed to be from the New Orleans area. This will be the first arrival of evacuees from the hurricane-ravaged area.

Media access will be as follows:

• News photographers will be allowed on the tarmac as the evacuees deplane. However, in order to allow the evacuees to quickly access the screening center, no interviews will be allowed at that point.
• After the evacuees have completed the screening process, reporters and photographers will be allowed access to them as they board the buses for transportation to Camp Williams.
• Tonight, in order to respect the privacy of the evacuees at Camp Williams, media access may be limited and will be directed by the Utah National Guard Public Affairs Officer (PAO) on-site.
• On Sunday, media access will again be under the direction of the PAO
  on-site.

Hurricane Help from around the Country

Help is rolling into New Orleans from everywhere now:

• New Mexico
• Idaho
• Montana
• North Dakota
• Maine

I was notified at 10:10 last night that we could expect as many as 2,000 people to be transported to Utah today.

Katrina's impact on Critical Infrastructure

One of the things that we learned so well during Y2K was the intereoperability and dependencies of various systems on each other. We are relearning that with Hurricane Katrina. I was doing a flyover of the New Orleans area using Google Earth, looking at refinery sites, etc. and the critical infrastructure that has been impacted by this catastrophe. According to DOE, about 10% of the nation's refinery capacity is still offline 5 days following the hurricane. The electrical outages are a big problem, not only for the refineries, but also for the major pipelines. Investors.com gives a good overview of the situation.

NOAA has made very detailed imagery of the hurricane's aftermath available on their website. If we have done our job in assessing critical infrastructure, the federal government should be able to identify all critical facilities in the region that were potentialy impacted. They should all be in a database somewhere, geocoded with information regarding the impact should that critical facility go offline. I have seen estimates as high as $100 billion associated with rebuilding the area. It could even be higher than that.

The Chevron facility in Pascagoula appears to be the largest refinery impacted by Katrina. Chevron is setting up a tent city for their employees affected in the area. Although the facility is still out of service, reports suggest that the impact was "not catastrophic."

The New York Times presents a good overview of the impacted oil industry in the area.

Massachussetts to eliminate Microsoft on 50,000 desktops

Massachussetts is moving aggressively toward open source, particularly with their announcement to move away from Word, Excel and other Microsoft Office products. This is the next expected step following two years of preparation by Peter Quinn and the development of an Enterprise Open Standards Policy.

On August 29th, CIO Quinn announced that Massuchussetts would adopt the recently ratified OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications.

see also Wikipedia

Technology Failures

One of the biggest lessons to learn from Katrina (again) is our dependency on technology. Here are a few quotes:

• "...nearly all lines of communication to the Gulf Coast were decimated in the wake of the hurricane." - Logan Herald
• Cell phone connections to the Gulf Coast are still spotty. Attempts to call Mary are likely to be met with an automated recording that says, "Due to the hurricane in the area you are calling, your call cannot be completed as dialed."
• "...many New Orleans residents had no means to communicate their situation to the outside world. That's when the primitives of high tech - ham radio operators - came to the rescue." - St. Petersburg Times

Both Utah and Idaho have communications support (personnel and vehicles) headed to Louisiana.

Even Utah-based companies are re-evaluating their IT contingency plans:

XanGo LLC, a Salt Lake City-based producer and distributor of juices, this week was trying to determine the extent of damage suffered by some of its distributors along the Gulf Coast, said Darren Pulsipher, the company's director of IT.

Internally, meanwhile, XanGo is setting up new disaster recovery processes. The company plans to open an office in Japan, which will be a failover site in case of a disaster in Utah, Pulsipher said. He's also looking for a third-party co-location facility that's geographically far enough away from Utah to provide protection.

In addition, Pulsipher has brought in workers who are experienced in running full-blown disaster recovery scenarios. "We'll set up some scenarios to test our systems out to make sure we have everything covered," he said. "We have a large call center and are making plans to figure out what to do if no one can get to work because we're buried in snow here." - Computerworld

Hurricane Evacuee Support

Yesterday, the State of Utah set up a toll free number for Utahns who wish to volunteer their time and resources to help the hurricane evacuees coming to Utah.

In a memo from the Utah Department of Health Director Dr. David Sundwall states,

“Response has been overwhelming through the toll free number. As a result, we have designated this email address as another option for those interested in offering help.”

Along with the toll free number, 866-873-2437 (through the Department of Health), an email address, katrinavolunteers@utah.gov, has been created for volunteers and community services to offer their time, help, advice and expertise.

FEMA has developed a good list of resources.