Friday, August 15, 2003

New eGov Blog Kevin Morris in the UK is putting together a new e-gov blog.  It is hosted at the "Help is at Hand" website which has an official UK government URL.  It supports the creation of weblogs for eGov, technology, etc. The August issue of Capitol Connections is online. 5:22:25 PM    comment []

Indirect Return on Investment in eGov There is an excellent article, "Indirect Return on Investment", in this month's issue of Public CIO magazine.  Creative thinking in creating a business case for important eGovernment projects is crtical to their success.For example, SBA has calculated the cost savings accruing from BusinessLaw.gov: Overall, SBA estimates BusinessLaw.gov already saves businesses about $526 million per year by reducing time and money spent finding the applicable regulations, understanding their meaning and then complying with them. Read the rest of this article.  It presents some great ideas.  We need to apply this to Business.Utah.Gov and One Stop as we begin the budgeting process to create legislative support for future enterprise projects. 10:14:59 AM    comment []

Western CIO Forum, Emergency Management, Etc. Major power failures and another aggressive worm.  I haven't had time to say much about recent events, but they have already sparked a review of a number of processes.  The Blaster virus impacted several Utah agencies, although the process of recovery was pretty well coordinated and our people acted pretty quickly to restrict damage.  Most agencies had taken precautions in advance and were ready for the attack.  The initial post-mortem indicates that about 1,400 machines were impacted here.  With respect to the blackout, CNET mentions that wireless communications were fraught with problems while landlines performed pretty well.  I think that our state operated wireless networks (including UCAN) are better able to cope with an outage.  Most of the transmitter and relay sites are able to operate on emergency generator power, etc., but we should re-evaluate the system to make sure that we haven't introduced any vulnerabilities.  I wonder what the loss ($$) was just for spoiled food resulting from no refrigeration.  We also experience some outages in Utah. New York City Emergency Management Mayor Bloomberg's press conference this morning / New York police officers responded to 80,000 911 calls, it sounds like the Office of Emergency Management did an admirable job responding to this emergency.  They are also doing an excellent job assuring that information on the website remains current. Our Division of Emergency Services is sponsoring a statewide public officials conference next week and I'm sure the blackout will be on everyone's mind as they discuss some very relevant topics, including the statewide incident management system and GIS. I will be participating on a panel at the Western CIO Summit to be held in Park City on the 25th and 26th.  Several governors will be attending, along with state and federal CIOs.  The event will focus on security, interoperability and egovernment.  The agenda looks really interesting. Next week, we will be hosting a group of government leaders from the PRC that have been participating in the China Leaders in Development Program at the Kennedy School at Harvard.  "The Utah activities support and reflect the CLD’s academic mission and strategic message and objectives. The Utah program will provide a direct complement to the teaching that the participants will receive in Cambridge. This field trip is intended to demonstrate practical applications of the American political system at the state and local levels rather than provide instruction on political theory and/or logistical issues. " Here's a Chinese press release on the program.  And an English article in Renmin Ribao.  I think the program is co-sponsored by Tsinghua (shown at right) and Beijing University. New developments in the MATRIX project. Wetlands Dispute Could Be Clue to Leavitt - The State It is always interesting to see my newsfeed in someone else's format.  This is my homeland security category on the Transportation Security Information Clearinghouse website which was developed as part of National Cooperative Highway Research Project. 7:58:25 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.