Monday, April 07, 2003

Fishing Licenses Buying a fishing license online is a pretty basic service.  Back in January 2001, California announced that it was making the purchase of fishing licenses available online.  Now, Barbara Haven reports that the service is no longer available.  I verified that on the Department of Fish and Game website.  Too bad.  I hate to see us moving backward. Utah fishing licenses are still available online and some waters are already open for the year.  Some of the best fishing is available right now.  The Division of Wildlife Resources maintains a weekly fishing report on locations throughout the state.  The USGS maintains real-time stream flow data for all areas of the state.  They also have this graphical version for all drainage basins in the state.  Another map lets you see very quickly what the water levels are across the state.  Mouse over each data point for details on individual locations - this is a pretty cool feature, although it indicates that generally, conditions are still not good.  The same map shows up on the Utah Drought Watch index.  Water Watch gives you this same data for the entire country. Another very interesting eGov application is the Utah Conservation Data Center Interactive Map.  This service, which is hosted on the AGRC ArcMIS server. lets you explore data such as threatened species habitats. 4:24:20 PM    comment []

Budget / Jobs Online / Bioshield Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released their analysis of the President's 2004 budget.  The Homeland Security budget shows an increase of 20% over the previous period.  The President is proposing a number of new programs for homeland security. The largest is Project BioShield, which would, among other things, create incentives to increase research for new vaccines. The President is requesting permanent, indefinite funding authority to enable the government to purchase vaccines as soon as they are demonstrated to be safe and effective. The Administration estimates that this proposal would require about $890 million in mandatory budget authority in 2004 and would cost about $3 billion over the 2004-2008 period, but the President's budget did not provide enough details about this proposal for CBO to provide an independent estimate. Last week. the Infectious Disease Society of America strongly supported the project, stating that it will "provide important incentives to accelerate pharmaceutical research to ensure the availability of drugs and other tools to respond to bioterrorism outbreaks." The NIAID sponsors this site on Biodefense research. With unemployment at 5.8% in March,  more Utahns are going online to find or upgrade their employment.  That is actually a decrease from 2002 when the rate was 6.2%.  The options for online jobseekers are increasingly diverse.  Jobs.utah.gov is a tremendous resource for both employers and job-seekers.  It allows employers to manage the whole process online in partnership with the Utah Department of Workforce Services.  The latest bulletin from the Department had this to say about high tech employment in the state: [High tech employers] showed a marked improvement in their employment situation. If their improvement were an indication that the technology sector has righted itself, this would signal a foundational shift in the economy that can lead to a much brighter employment picture as this year unfolds. See the latest Trendlines Report for more info. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has a new website. 12:38:37 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.