Friday, November 21, 2003

Colorado DNR Under Attack The Colorado Department of Natural Resources is under fire for hiring a CIO when they already had an IT Director that was making $106,000 a year.  This along with criticism for a contract with Alta Ventures who they contracted with to develop recommendations for streamlining the deparment and who would receive a share of any savings.  The project, called the Core Mission Project, suggests savings of as much as $30 million.  According to their study, the department has 28.5 PIOs and 26 GIS programmers so they should have pretty good maps and public information if nothing else.  The study also absorbed 30,000 staff hours.  Maybe that's why they need so many PIOs.  The Director may decide to resign earlier than he planned.  It does look like they could stand for some IT consolidation.  The department operates 5 LANs, 2 WANs, and 70 servers.  According to the Department: The Project is focused on generating savings in administrative functions and in re-prioritization of employees’ time across all functions, in order to reinvest those savings into better performance of the core missions of the agencies. In other words, we should spend less on accounting, purchasing, payroll, personnel, computers, and administrative support – and more on wildlife, parks, water, forests, and public lands management. 3:18:49 PM    comment []

Internet in China The Markle Foundation recently completed a study of the impact of the internet in China.  According to Zoe Baird, "China is second only to the U.S. in the number of Internet users, with the number of users growing rapidly. The Internet has the potential to contribute significantly to the future of the people of China." The study was performed in 12 Chinese cities, with internet usage expectedly higher in coastal metropolises of Nanhai, Guangzhou, and Shanghai.  I am assuming that they are talking Nanhai in Guangdong province since it is larger than Nanhai, Hebei, but I'm not sure, because when they refer to Nanhai, they refer to it as a smaller city so it could be Nanhai, Hebei.  This really is a fascinating study that sheds a lot of light on the differences between different areas of China and how technology is affecting them. 7:57:17 AM    comment []

Infragard The next quarterly InfraGard (Rocky Mtn area) Meeting will be held on 12/17/03 at 1 pm.  It will be held at the new Salt Lake City Public Library which is located at 210 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, UT.   We will have three speakers for the meeting.  FBI Special Agents Ken Crook , Joint Terrorism Task Force;  Karl Schmae, Homeland Security Task Force; and Lt. Scott Blackburn, Utah Department of Public Safety, Division of Emergency Services and Homeland Security.  7:11:38 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.