Thursday, January 23, 2003

Government RSS There are now 58 government-related RSS feeds on Syndic8.  That is a major improvement from when I looked about six months ago and an exciting development in light of my goal to have all Utah agencies produce their news in RSS.  I discovered that the Utah State Library's Ferret newsletter now has an RSS feed as well.  Good for them!  Time to add more sources to my aggregator. 10:49:08 AM

eGovLinks / Building the Virtual State eGovLinks has transitioned to a great new look.  Be sure to check out their featured newsfeed! While there, I took a quick jump over to their featured book, Jane Fontain's Building the Virtual State (Brookings Institute).  Chapter One is available online and makes some interesting observations as well as presents some ideas for quantifying egovernment benefits.  Here are a few: "the information revolution represents a fundamental, deep and disjunctive shift in society, economy, and government." Fontain points out that the U.S. Business Advisor was the nation's first federal government web portal In discussing the International Trade Data System, she states, "if the state is to adequately regulate a global economy in which agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, assembled goods, and inputs cross international borders with impressive frequency, it has little choice but to develop information systems that integrate and facilitate the work [63] agencies with partial jurisdiction over trade" (important reference here to why we need to look at things from a higher level perspective than that of an individual agency - drive towards integration) Dr. Fontain is the director of the National Center for Digital Government at Harvard.  There's some interesting stuff going on here such as their workshop on the Virtual Citizen. 8:52:47 AM

Medical Informatics In another excerpt from the State-of-the-State, Governor Leavitt says, Putting education first in our budget is good economic policy.  That's our strategy, and it works.  I'm pleased to announce that tomorrow we will sign a deal resulting in the creation of 500 to 1000 new technology jobs in Utah by prominent national companies over the next 3 years.  Anyone who is interested may go to the State of Utah website for more information about these exciting opportunities.  These jobs are in a health care industry called medical informatics... Specifically, the types of jobs that are available are: Medical billing services including medical coding and compliance, claims analysis, and past due collections Electronic data exchange including electronic claims processing, paper claims processing, electronic statements, and automatic remittance Electronic medical accounting services including payroll, accounts payable, financial analysis and review, and taxes Medical transcription services Management services including credentialing, contracting, staffing, employee benefits, and human resource management Purchasing support including supplies, insurance, employee leasing, equipment leasing, credit card processing, claims factoring, and outcome studies. Information has been posted to jobs.utah.gov and on the Governor's website.  As the jobs become available, jobseekers can apply online through jobs.utah.gov.  Three of the health informatics companies that form part of this initiative are Wipro Technologies, MedQuist, and Practice Rx.  Specific training has been coordinated with the University of Utah, College of Eastern Utah, Salt Lake Community College, Southern Utah University, Weber State University and LDS Business College.  link: American Medical Informatics Association 7:29:54 AM

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.