Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Virginia Governor Mark Warner Pushes IT Consolidation According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginia is looking at a plan to consolidate information technology in the state.  Governor Warner calls the current structure "a sprawling, unaccountable operation."  Government will continue to look at IT consolidation, particularly as long as budgets continue to spiral downward.  Furthermore, in Virginia, "almost all agencies now manage their computers, networks, and IT projects independently."  At least in Utah, the WAN is centrally administered along with the primary and alternative data centers.  Much of the purchasing is consolidated into centrally generated contracts, included the WSCA contract which is consolidated with other states as well.  Many opportunities still exist here however, and our dive into enterprise projects is a major experiment.  We'll be watching how Virginia progresses as well since they are a key competitor in the areas of IT and eGovernment.  The Times-Dispatch article is interesting because, according to Governing Magazine, "Almost everything in this state’s technology is top-drawer." 4:45:49 PM

Budget Woes Ongoing issues related to budget shortfalls continue to challenge eGov initatives.  A special session of the legislature will be held next Wednesday to look at ways to address the additional $117 million shortfall in the current budget. Article in the Deseret News 11:20:08 AM

Live Help Live help is now available on Utah.gov.  We are using PHP Live! to support live chat for users of Utah.gov that have questions regarding services that are offered on the portal.  Today is the first day that it is available to the public.  PHP Live! provides a lot of functionality in terms of being able to transfer chat sessions, track utilization, develop automated responses, etc. 11:00:21 AM

XML Encryption Recommendations Important announcement from W3C: "The World Wide Web Consortium today released XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and Decryption Transform for XML Signature as W3C Recommendations. The specifications have been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor their adoption by industry." According to the press release: Although there are deployed technologies that allow senders and receivers to secure a complete data object or communication session, only W3C XML Signature (together with the new W3C XML Encryption Recommendation) permits users to selectively sign and encrypt portions of XML data. For example, a user of a Web services protocol such as SOAP may want to encrypt the payload part of the XML message but not the information necessary to route the payload to its recipient. Or, an XForms application might require that the payment authorization be digitally signed, and the actual payment method, such as a credit card number, be encrypted. And, of course, XML Encryption can be used to secure complete data objects as well such as such as an image or sound file. 10:51:32 AM

Science.gov Barbara Haven mentions the new Federal science portal - www.science.gov.  This is basically an extension of FirstGov, a portal/index of federal sites related to science and technology.  10:09:12 AM

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.