Tuesday, June 24, 2003

The Year in Government Computing I just received my copy of The Year in Government Computing.  It contains some great material.  Unfortunately, not all of it is available online yet.  This year's publication is sponsored by the Federal CIO Council which is leading the charge toward development and integration of enterprise architectural models, a major topic in this year's magazine.   A lead article on egovernment suggest that many leaders perceive egovernment to be a key in solving major government budget issues.  The article spotlights three sites created by the Wyoming Business Council that are all driven by a common database.  These sites are perhaps most creative web products that I have seen from Wyoming and represent a dramatic improvement.  The Wyoming Business Council appears to be a quasi-governmental organization that was created several years ago from seven state agencies.  Take a look: Wyoming Business Wyoming Film Wyoming Interactive Visitor Center An article on the CIO Council discusses the organization of Federal enterprise portfolio management.  An OMB manager reporting to Mark Forman oversees each of four different portfolios: government to citizen, government to business, government to government, and internal federal applications.  The government-to-government portfolio is important to me.  The portfolio manager at OMB is Tony Frater. Another article discusses the complexity of enterprise architecture and how you summarize and escalate the most important information to decision and policy-makers, including the capability to drill down much deeper, integrate information across the enterprise, share sensitive data with appropriate access controls, etc.  "This is not information technology for information technology's sake.  This is ensuring that information technology is an enabler and solves a defined business problem."  Sometimes, we're not even very good at defining the problem. Digital IQ's coverage of the release of the new Utah.gov portal.  Also in Governing Magazine and the Center for Digital Government. 1:24:44 PM    comment []

Online Workers Comp Info on a Blog and the Daily Whirl Robert Vonada is using Blogger Pro to maintain an online digest of developments related to Pennsylvania Workers Compensation Practice and Procedure.  This online journal is one of dozens of sites that can be subscribed to and aggregated at the Daily Whirl.  Be sure to scroll down to the "Set Your Preferences" section of the site to see how effectively they are able to provide all kinds of RSS content. Ernie the Attorney points to RSS News Feeds for Law, a new resource from the Virtual Chase. By the way, this blog has now made it through its first year! 10:42:34 AM    comment []

Online Job Referrals News from the Utah Department of Workforce Services: Last week (June 15 to June 21) there were 50,276 job referrals made in UWORKS. 32,557 of these referrals were made on the web or 65%. Also, 56% of all new seeker registrations were made on the web. We are averaging 4,651 job referrals a day being made via jobs.utah.gov. This includes the weekends. If you just count weekdays we average 6078 web referrals a day. Not only does online registration improve government efficiency, it also reduces energy consumption and saves citizens time and money.  It should also result in a reduced need to build out more facilities.  I have received several comments about DWS' online services and am excited to see this kind of adoption rate.  I know they are continually working to improve their service and have one of the State's premier egovernment product managers on task.  They are also working on an RSS feed for employment related news and information. 10:21:17 AM    comment []

Fast Computers Five sites capable of storing a petabyte of data are being connected by a 40 gigabit per second network to form what is being promoted as the fastest network in the world.  The project, known as Teragrid, is funded by the National Science Foundation.  Proposals for computing projects to run on the network are now being accepted. Only one of the computers on the Teragrid network are among the 10 fastest computers in the world according to this recently published survey  Sixty percent of the top twenty are owned by the US government.  Half of the top 6 are at Lawrence Livermore. Lawrence Livermore has several interesting homeland security research programs and has expressed an interest in state and local partnerships.  I think we should look into their information analysis and infrastructure protection program to see if there is such an opportunity.  Last week, they announced RadScout, a lightweight handheld portable system that not only detects radioactive material, but then analyzes and identifies the source in real time. 10:08:48 AM    comment []

Buy Golden Eagle Passes Online The Federal government has made their Golden Eagle and other recreation passes available through multiple online venues.  This is a good reflection of their attempts to implement a "no wrong door" approach to electronic government.   Public Lands and the Forest Service are among the places where you can purchase the pass (along with recreation.gov)  July is National Recreation and Parks Month.  I still like Charlie Grimes' approach to developing RecML.  The draft OASIS standard is scheduled for completion by September 2003.  Government agencies are invited to add associated recreation sites to the Recreation.gov database. 8:54:25 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.