Support for Katrina Victims

The State of Utah will be offering to house and support upwards of 1,000 Hurricane Katrina victims. I was asked earlier today to identify ways that our agency can support this effort. As a technology agency, I was able to identify things like telephone and computer access, website development to share information for those who may be coming here and teleconferencing and videoconferencing services. David Stephenson also offers some ideas about how IT people can help with Katrina (and other disasters in the future).

With so many dislocated people, websites are popping up to offer help and assistance.

• Homes for Katrina
• NOLA: Homes Available
• Free Republic housing forum
• Marriott Execustay
• Oakwood Housing Solutions
• HCRD Relief Effort
• Craig's List
  

Communications Problems in New Orleans

Here's a statement that we see over and over again, every time there is a disaster. This is from CNN coverage of the Katrina response:

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

It's late (2:30 am) and I just got an error message after writing my longest post of the year. I hate that. I have been thinking about NAIS, NASA's look at Katrina, Google Desktop, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Firstgov's RSS Library, along with a myriad of other things, but I'm not going to get around to reconstructing my thoughts tonight.

Katrina Bloggers

Bloggers look at Hurricane Katrina:

• Dvorak Uncensored
• rexblog
• Brendan Loy
• Metroblogging New Orleans
• Josh Britton
• CrabAppleLane
• EyesOnKatrina
• Hurricane Katrina
• Katrina Blog
• Hurricane Harbor
• KatrinaCane's Friends

Wireless State, Untethered Nation

The Center for Digital Government has published a guide for wireless initiatives in the public sector called "Building the Untethered Nation." You have to register to gain access which I generally decline doing, but in this case I thought it might be worth the effort particularly since we are in the midst of defining where we want to go in the wireless broadband arena and this document provides an organized approach.

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.
  

IT Consolidation in Indiana

Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana listed some very specific initiatives for the first weeks and months of his administration. Daniels created the Indiana Office of Technology his second day in office. The office was the consolidation of three pre-existing entities. It is divided into five divisions. Daniels' focus is on government efficiency and he has a goal of saving $150 million six months into his administration. His scorecard shows that much has already been accomplished.

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

Bart Mason, an Oregonian, just started blogging on two diverse topics: open source in government and motocross. I haven't seen those two items mentioned on the same blog before. Oregon State has an open source lab... sounds interesting. I'll have to check to see if any of our local universities has something like that. I'm always interested in seeing state government partner more with higher ed. Bart writes that the Oregon Department of Administrative Services is supporting open source initiatives including the use of Asterisk for over 500 audio conferences a week. Sounds like something worth looking into. Here is an article detailing how it works. Asterisk is open source PBX software created by Digium. This is all fairly new. The Asterisk website just went live on August 1st. I may want to send someone to the Astricon Fall Conference if it looks attractive.

Posts from Utah

Eric Hamilton who posts on a variety of issues, including digital music rights, writes about a recent raid on a rave held in Diamond Fork (Spanish Fork Canyon), arguing that Utah County officials went too far. I guess State officers were also involved. A more complete story can be found on Wiki News. It's amazing how many dynamic map sources are now available for a specific site like this.

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.

GJXDM Virtual Help Desk

Alice Marshall points out a service that some Utah IT people will be interested in. The group behind the Global Justice XML Data (GJXDM) have put together a virtual help desk. Utah uses GJXDM extensively in its CJIS system which integrates services for justice workers into a single portal.

Blogwatch: PMThink! Project Management Thought Leadership

Utah IT Consolidation Issues

Representative John Dougall posts some interesting comments on the State of Utah IT consolidation that provide insight into the reasons why the legislature chose to include some changes to merit status as part of the bill. He entitles his comments "If You are Competent You Need Not Fear". There is no grand conspiracy by the legislature to get rid of a fixed number of IT employees that I am aware of. On the other hand, I think there are plenty of opportunities for those who really want to excel.

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.

I'm surprised that it took me this long to stumble across Matt Asay's blog. In his recent posting, he mentions a discussion with Stan Taylor on open source intelligence. It turns out that I had the same class from Professor Taylor a long time ago. Since I was an IR major as an undergraduate, open source intel is an old idea, but not related to open source software which is what I was just thinking about. I was wondering if California had done anything at all with SO10, the CPR recommendation to explore open source alternatives. Specifically, the recommendations were:

• 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

The LA Times reports on the status of the California Performance Review, concluding that the majority of the recommendations have yet to be implemented. Boi from Troy says that at least one thing has gotten better - Californians can now renew their vehicle licenses online and the lines at the DMV have reduced waiting time from 45 to 20 minutes.

Information Security and More

US Cert continues to improve as an central information resource for cyber security. Here are the security items for this week alone.

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.

State Children's Protection Registries generate a little controversy

The Families and Technology Blog discusses two new children's protection registries set up by the states of Utah (Utah Code Title 13, Chapter 39)and Michigan. Parents and teachers have been able to register children for the Utah registry since July 15th, while Michigan's has been available since the first of this month. As mentioned, the service looks like an interesting idea. By the looks of things, both sites were developed by the same developer (Park City-based company Unspam Technologies). Enforcement may turn out to be quite difficult. Some have attacked the idea as being too difficult to implement or potentially counterproductive. What do you think?

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?

David Coursey's article, "RSS Is a Label We Don't Need to See" is a COMPLETE waste of ink. To suggest that the term RSS be replaced by "web feeds" is just stupid. I do not know what a web feed is, how it is formated, or what I'm going to use it for. RSS tells me a lot in one neat little label. It tells me that I can aggregate it or do all kinds of other interesting things. Corsey reminds me of an IT director that was in a meeting that I held who stated that if I was going to use acronyms like "XML" he would have to bring his technical staff to interpret. RSS is what it is. "Web feed" is something vague that could be anything - or nothing at all.

Here's an article about egovernment and the use of open source in Utah state government published in the latest edition of Novell's Connection magazine.

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.

The National Journal on UTOPIA

The latest article in a multipart series in the National Journal discusses UTOPIA, a consortium of Utah cities that are rolling out the largest fiber-optic network in the country. There a couple of additional muni-fiber buildouts in Utah that are already ahead of UTOPIA, including the one that I benefit from at home.

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.

Proactive Asset Management

IT asset management is much more than merely identifying, tagging and tracking assets - or at least it should be. The problem is, we often do not even do a good job at doing these basic functions. The opportunity is that if we can identify and integrate some of the more robust and active elements of good asset management into our work activity, we will probably do a better job of tracking. After discussing what we want to do with asset management, Bob Woolley has done a good job of conceptualizing these ideas into an overall diagram with most of the component definitions. One of the keys to making this activity successful will be the organization's ability to integrate these activities in a way that provides additional intelligence and value leading to proactive rather than reactive asset management. Although I thought of the term (proactive asset management) independently, I have discovered a set of good material on the subject. It even has a recognized acronym (PAM) - I thought that was "America's favorite cooking spray."

Here's a few links:

• Proactive Asset Management with High ROI
• Asset Management Evolution (Peregrine)

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.

Check out this growing list of RSS feeds at Michigan.gov. Now, Governor Granholm is starting a weekly podcast. It is a good thing when politicians reach out to the public like this. In her recent message to Michigan state employees, you can see that she is very focused on technology. She even mentions Utah.

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.

New Vulnerability Database

NIST has unveiled the new National Vulnerability Database. NVD integrates all publicly available US government cyber-vulnerability information in a single site.

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.

ZDNet Government

ZDNet initiated a new service this week aimed at government IT workers. ZDNet Government supports those interested in IT in the public sector and includes blogs, white papers and videos. There's some great interactive services here, as well as commentary from some of ZDNet's best writers such as Declan McCullagh.

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.

Michigan Information Technology Center

I really like the thinking that led to the creation of the Michigan Information Technology Center, a state of the art facility serving the needs of both the State of Michigan and the University of Michigan. The facility also serves as the hub for Internet 2 and Merit Network in the state and brings leading edge industries together with government and education.

Here's an interesting presentation from Ford given at Merit's June 2005 annual conference.

Continuing the Transition

Utah's transition to a centralized IT organization continues to take shape. We are creating teams in the following areas to move forward with the key tasks that have been identified:

• Service Level Management
• Policy and Planning
• Infrastructure
• Administration
• Solutions Delivery
• Organization
• Security

I had an opportunity to meet with the director of information security from Taiwan yesterday who was sponsored by the State Department.

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).

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.

Al Sherwood Starts a new Blog

Al Sherwood, who retired recently as Deputy CIO for the State of Utah, has accepted a role as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Digital Government. He has also initiated a new weblog where we can keep track of his adventures.

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.

Going in Opposite Directions

The latest issue of GCN discusses two state IT organizations that are moving in opposite directions. Florida appears to have given up on consolidation. After going through 3 CIOs in four years, the position has now been eliminated. Texas, on the other hand, is still moving in the same direction as many of the rest of us... aggressively toward IT consolidation.

• Florida gives up on consolidation, at least for now
• Texas bets on a unified infrastructure