Thursday, November 14, 2002

Information Week Goodies According to Information Week, "CIOs have an important new role to play: identifying and fostering disruption."  I'm sure that Phil will appreciate hearing that. In another great article, entitled "One Nation, Under I.T.", Eric Chabrow writes about government efforts to create a collaborative, integrated information architecture. What a great idea.  The article focuses on Steve Cooper's efforts to develop an enterprise architecture for homeland security.  By the way, we took a step forward yesterday and are now successfully exchanging RISS data. NGA released a 'best practices' brief a few days ago entitled "Optimizing State Investments for Justice Information Sharing" that outlines a strategy very similar to what we're trying to do with all our enterprise projects, including homeland security. 1:29:04 PM

Utah.gov continues to add services Government Technology magazine just posted an article on the new county tax application that just went live.  We reviewed the application in the last meeting of the state product management council and got some good feedback.  I expect to see more participation in utah.gov by local governments in the future on projects like the one-stop business registration. 11:51:00 AM

Utopia Website Utopia now has a website.  Looking at the map of participating cities, there is a critical mass of participants in Salt Lake Valley including West Valley City, Murray, Midvale, Taylorsville, South Jordan, and Riverton, with the rest scattered up and down the Wasatch Front.  The consortium is still working on a feasability study which will be completed in the first quarter of 2003. Meanwhile, Springville is moving ahead with its purchase of Switchpoints fiber infrastructure and teaming of with the Utah County Community Network group. 11:46:21 AM

FBI Crime Report I missed the release of the FBI's annual crime report two weeks ago.  There's some interesting comparative data here between states and municipalities. 9:27:01 AM

Security and Privacy Our state infrastructure protection committee needs to read IEEE's 2002 report on security and privacy.  This supplement is full of excellent information that helps clarify what the current issues really are. New vulnerabilities are the dark side of globalization and rapid information technology development. Securing our countries, our businesses, and our personal lives against cybercrime and terrorism requires an unprecedented change in laws, policies, culture, and attitudes about cyber security, which in our democracy will evolve over time. In addition, we need more public-private partnerships to protect us from these new threats. Enterprise risk management needs to understand this issue and become involved since exposure will only continue to increase.  I would recommend the articles, Information Assurance in the Twenty-first Century, Computer Attack Trends Challenge Internet Security, and Security Challenges for the Electricity Infrastructure. 9:16:32 AM

Cybersecurity R&D A new cybersecurity bill (H.R. 3394) passed the house yesterday.  I guess it provides about $900 million in funding, but most of it is for R&D work by NIST and NSF.  Olivia Sheng of the University of Utah Eccles Business School has been busy applying for NSF grants.  This would be another good opportunity that perhaps the State could team with the University and the local Infragard chapter. 8:51:27 AM

Capitol Connections The November issue of Capitol Connections is online!   8:25:20 AM

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.