Monday, January 24, 2005

Promoting Innovation I was glad to see Governor Huntsman promoting innovation over the weekend.  Innovation must drive the US (and Utah's) economy if we expect it to continue to grow. Looking at the Census ranking tables, Utah only has 26.2 percent of its population over 25 with a Bachelor's Degree (that ranks 20th among all states).  There should be no reason for not being closer to Massachussetts (35.8%) or Colorado (34.7%).  And we need to particularly support engineering and the sciences. I had an opportunity to meet with John Carter, professor of CS at the University of Utah, on Friday.  John recently completed a paper on secure cyber-foraging infrastructures to support resource-constrained devices on the network.  Should be something to consider as we develop a statewide grid computing architecture.  I will be speaking at their Industry Forum on March 25th. Doug Chandler mentions Michael Powell's resignation as Chairman of the FCC on Friday.  He has a nice list of accomplishments during his tenure there. Florida is backing off a little on its outsourcing strategy.  That can happen when you get major protests and the associated controversy.  Now it appears that the State Technology Office will be split into two parts, with policy remaining in the governor's office and operations returning to the Department of Management Services. Texas CIO Larry Olson is consolidating and outsourcing data centers and says that he can get PCs for 28% less than WSCA. Governor Kempthorne of Idaho is proposing a Capitol restoration project, beginning with this statement in his State of the State address: We spend a lot of money promoting high technology and equipping state government with the latest tools to improve efficiency and constituent service. Yet those modern computers are plugged into 1917 electrical wiring. and he's continuing to support high-tech development: We’ve launched the Office of Science and Technology and they have spent the past year working with companies, Idaho’s universities and the Idaho National Laboratory to expand high-tech opportunities in Idaho.  We will open a new Tech Connect office in the Magic Valley. This will be our fourth Tech Connect office to help entrepreneurs in high-tech start-up companies get off the ground. 7:14:18 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 David Fletcher.