Wednesday, October 09, 2002

PowerForward Governor Leavitt, Natalie Gochnour and Jeff Burks are scheduled to receive an award from the Association of Professional Energy Managers for the PowerForward program.  PowerForward is a program used to alert citizens of times when it is critical to take additional energy conservation measures.  The effort included a website, an email notification application, and a media campaign.   Driven by the electrical shortages that were particularly severe during the summer of 2001, the program was effective at reducing energy consumption during peak utilization periods.  The awards dinner will be held on October 18th. 3:33:45 PM

Boston Globe on Windley Utah CIO, Phil Windley spoke this morning at the Digital Identity conference in Denver.  After summarizing his presentation, David Weinberger of the Boston Globe writes, Phil comes across as smart, honest, open, passionate and likeable...the model of what you want a government person to be. Locally, Phil has had some trouble with people because he has been honest, open, and passionate.  Here's Phil's presentation on ID and eGovernment. Real-time coverage of Digital ID World.  This is an aggregation of RSS feeds from conference participants.  That's pretty cool. 2:39:20 PM

Western Regional Air Partnership Governor Leavitt co-chairs the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP).  WRAP is a collaborative effort of 13 western state governments, an equal number of tribal governments, and various federal agencies.  Its purpose is to address air quality issues, especially regional haze that reduces air quality at selected national parks, wilderness areas and wildlife refuges The WRAP ambient air monitoring database web site, operated by Colorado State University’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere(CIRA), will receive a new name and begin providing a broader array of data and data analysis tools covering the entire country under an agreement between the nation’s Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs). The new Visibility Information and Exchange Web Site (VIEWS) will replace the WRAP’s current ambient monitoring database and will incorporate other databases.  This looks like a very robust online application, although some queries seem to bog it down.  The CIRA earthstation currently collects, processes, and distributes 60GB of meteorological data each day, and archives over 7TB each year.  That's a lot of data. Subscribe to WRAP's newsletter 1:53:37 PM

Utah Cabinet Governor Leavitt's cabinet met yesterday to review the status of the State's enterprise projects.  The cabinet approved moving the Citizen Directory project forward to the scoping phase.  Roland Squire was approved as the enterprise project executive for homeland security and Lloyd Johnson, of the Department of Natural Resources was approved as the project executive for the state payment gateway project.  We hope to approve scope for both projects in the November cabinet meeting. Rich McKeown, the Governor's Chief of Staff, presented some ideas on managing change.  It seems that some state IT workers have been challenged with the disruptions that change can cause.  The Governor proposes to enhance communication with IT workers throughout the state.  With this in mind, the following strategies will be implemented to make the transition to online government and enterprise systems more effective. Share the IT vision and management direction regularly and proactively with IT employees. Invite and encourage frequent and regular communication between IT employees and their supervisors. Provide custom training to IT supervisors on managing in an environment of change (this will be provided by the Department of Human Resource Management) Create an ombudsman who will listen to employee concerns, protect confidences, and distill and share concerns with the governor's Chief of Staff Conduct ongoing, independent reviews of IT functions, jointly supervised by the executive and legislative branch. 12:38:25 PM

Enterprise Projects and the State System I have long viewed the state as a single complex system.  In a way, it acts and responds much like the human body.  Its information systems and communications (both human and tech-based) form the central nervous system.  External inputs into the system can result in all kinds of unforeseen consequences and repercussions.  When a component of that system has a problem, is sick, or fails, it can have major impacts on the rest of the system.  Following up on that, let's say that someone has a bad kidney and they decide to get a kidney replacement.  Without careful planning (and sometimes even with careful planning) the body may reject the new component.  Is it the fault of the newly introduced kidney.  Not necessarily.  What is necessary is deeper understanding of the complexities of the system - which in the case I am talking about is state government.  How do systems interact with each other?  What kinds of inputs will help to maximize or improve the performance of specific functions within the system?  If we eliminate a specific function, what are the implications for the rest of the system. 12:20:49 PM

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.