Monday, April 11, 2005

The Social Web and Open Identity Tony Blair is set to launch his Digital Britain initiative as a way to cut the cost of government. I just ran across this six-month old Burton group report on the federal eAuthentication initiative.  Craig Burton is still talking about authentication and his meeting with Kim Cameron of Microsoft who is discussing the possibility of Mozilla support for Open Identity.  Kim thinks of nothing but identity (from Drummond Reed): "I just want to go on record that Kim is 100% the real thing. I’ve never met anyone like him. The Laws didn’t come from any preconceived agenda or marketing spin, they came straight from the heart of Kim’s lifetime of messaging and metadirectory experience and his passion for creating a true Internet-wide identity infrastructure that will finally usher in what he calls “the big bang” – the explosion of new applications that will be possible with authenticated online trust relationships" Drummond collaborates on an extremely interesting article about the Social Web. Tom Adelstein just published his latest article on Linux in Government. Accenture's latest survey on eGov, entitled "Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences," is out.  You'll have to register on their site to access it. Al Bredenberg reports on TMCnet's initial podcast. The Arizona Republic reports on that state's concerns about losing ground in technology. 6:21:00 PM    comment []

Thursday, March 03, 2005

e-Parliament Carlos Guadian from Spain mentions e-Parliament, a new online institution to bring together elected officials from around the world into a global forum to help build a better world.  I am encouraging some Utah legislators to participate.  It looks like an interesting e-democracy experiment. 8:09:21 AM    comment []

Monday, December 06, 2004

eGovernment News China's Zhejiang province is cracking down on civil servants who chat using instant messaging services during work hours.  I'm not sure how that differs much from chatting on the phone, except that it's a little easier to multi-task. Speaking of China, 65% of all households in Hong Kong are now connected to the internet.  Almost 29% now use government online services. The state of Jigawa is extending broadband services into rural Nigeria to support egovernment initiatives. The city of Boise just selected Percussion's Rhythmyx ECM package for their portal. 5:20:28 PM    comment []

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

New Oklahoma Portal, Innovative Funding Strategies Oklahoma Governor, Bob Henry, announced his state's new portal yesterday.  Although there are still a few issues with the site and it still suffers from a shortage of high impact online services, even I must admit that it is a vast improvement from their previous version - not Best of the Web material yet however.  Too many states, including Hawaii and Indiana, have a big headstart on them.  And Ohio has a new business portal. Since , let's see how long it takes for them to update their site with the new director. Alice Marshall's post, Tech on the Potomac, has some great links to some of the latest in Federal tech developments, including the Colab Community Wiki where I ran across GSA's latest newsletter on innovative funding strategies.  Check this out, there's some good ideas here. 7:53:09 AM    comment []

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Local eGov The ICMA has compiled an interesting survey on e-government in cities and counties.  One barrier for smaller towns has been the lack of an IT staff.  That's apparent if you were to visit this Sanpete County (Utah) website.  Local government in Utah should know that there are several sources of help to develop websites and online services, including the Utah Division of Information Technology Services and Utah Interactive.  For example, here is the new site that ITS created for the town of BrianHead. 8:52:06 AM    comment []

Friday, October 08, 2004

eGov on a Roll I think there are several paths to excellence in government technology.  The UK's Ian Watmore is team-building as he attempts to refocus governmentwide efforts: "I have ideas and priorities to put into the debate but I want to listen to what other people want to do - there is plenty of time to influence, I want to understand first" Hawaii has joined Utah in offering a one-stop business registration service.  They're calling it Hawaii Business Express.  In fact, they've redesigned the whole state portal since I last looked.  They've also added Live Help.  But what is pahoehoe? The US Dept of Agriculture has also improved its portal.  This week, Secretary Ann Veneman announced My.USDA.gov for those who want to personalize their USDA experience.  I guess that's something maybe farmers would be interested in. The bovine genome database is now available through a map viewer at NCBI. This is a subset of GenBank.  Japan has established its own online DNA databank. There has been a lot happening this week here in Utah.  The eGovernment Product Management Council meet Wednesday and had a chance to review the Dept. of Commerce's new Controlled Substance Database that will be available to practitioners and pharmacists.  Various wireless initiatives are moving forward.  A new state search engine RFP is almost ready to hit the street.  And I'm very interested in using DCML (if it is ready) to reduce the silos that exist within our own data center operations. The FDA has a mammography facility database that is searchable online.  Forty-seven facilities can be found in Utah. The National Geodetic Survey is working to expand positioning services nationwide.  UDOT is spearheading an initiative here in Utah. The deadline for voter registration is fast approaching.  Here's what you need to do. Governor Ernie Fletcher announced his plan to get broadband to all Kentuckians by 2007, "Prescription for Innovation: Delivering Broadband Technology for a 21st Century Kentucky."   His extensive initiatives to reorganize just about all of state government are also quite interesting. 8:15:49 AM    comment []

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Brown Survey of State eGovernment Brown University Taubmann Center announced their 2004 e-government winners.  The top five are: Tennessee Maine Utah New York Illinois Tom mentions this in his GovTech Blog.  Tom, the reason why Utah is not mentioned in the Center for Digital Government Best of the Web list is that Utah won last year and were not eligible for this year's competition.  We'll do our best for 2005.  Brown looked at 1,569 sites in their state survey which amounts to over 30 sites per state so it's a fairly broad survey.  I am also much more impressed this year with the depth of the survey.  On glaring problem they pointed out for Utah is the lack of titles on web pages (they identified 413).  Other states had problems with other types of metadata, including keywords and alt tags.  The key to this survey is getting the entire state to pay attention to detail in web design.  There is some great data here that we will address in our next eGovernment product management council meeting on October 6th. Utah ranked very high for the percent of sites with online services, behind only Illinois.  Illinois surprises me as does the fact that Virginia and Washington, who I tend to view as two of the top five digital states dropped to 23rd and 24th in this fairly comprehensive survey. Here's the complete survey 1:58:40 PM    comment []

Friday, September 17, 2004

Taiwan the best at e-government According to Darrell West of Brown University, Taiwan is now the top ranked e-government.  The Brown Center for Public Policy surveyed almost two thousand websites in 198 countries.  This year's report is not yet available on the Center's website, but Singapore was ranked 2nd and the U.S. 3rd.  I'm wondering about the the Scandinavian countries who traditionally place very high.  The small town of Keizer, Oregon has a new website. A Louisiana columnist complains about that state's failure to use technology to more effectively communicate prior to and during the hurricane evacuation.  Time for a self-evaluation.  And state CIOs will be meeting in New Orleans in a couple of days. San Diego is the most connected via Broadband according to Nielsen ratings.  Salt Lake City makes the top ten for narrowband connections. And former California CIO John Thomas Flynn has joined the Center for Digital Government. 5:53:30 PM    comment []

Friday, September 03, 2004

Accident Information in Kansas Kansas is now posting its accident logs to the web in a nicely arranged service.  Utah has been doing this for some time, but I really like the GIS front end to the Kansas service.  We could do more here.  The nice thing is that the data is coming in from all the dispatch centers through standard XML, so to display it in different ways is relatively simple - and it includes a lot of local data as well. 7:35:17 AM    comment []

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) It's great to have a governor that is supportive of technology initiatives.  Governor Walker met last week with members of the Utah Information Technology Association which is an association of officials from Utah technology companies.  She had this to say, "I hope that we are pushing the technology envelope in the state's services to the point where technology advances our ability to provide top-notch customer services instead of limited bureaucracy. We need to make sure that our government is not creating barriers for good technology. So far we are doing things that other states tell me are impossible. We have about 200 services available online and that number is growing everyday. For instance, technology has helped our Department of Workforce Services better integrate with other state departments to better serve potential employees. We must be using technology right when people can get fishing licences at 3:00 am." So, if there is anyone that doubted Governor Walker's dedication to e-government, they should not anymore.  EPA administrator Mike Leavitt has a new project he's excited about.  It's called the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.   I see why he's excited.  This is a federal "enterprise project" that involves 11 agencies in an effort to monitor the globe and enhance the effort to predict floods, drought, disease, pestilence, and global warming.  This kind of global resource has applicability in dozens of areas. The Open Group has published presentations from their Enterprise Information Management conference held at the end of July.  There's some great stuff here.  Very applicable what states are trying to do with their enterprise architecture initiatives.  Keep drilling down, it gets even better... 10:28:54 AM    comment []

Monday, August 16, 2004

Hurricane Charlie in the Florida Portal I always check to see how states respond to a major disaster on their state portals.  Florida has clearly made hurricane Charley information a priority, clearing away the center of their portal and filling it with information on contacts, resources, etc.  They've added a banner for an online reporting system to report price gouging in the aftermath of the hurricane.  None of the Florida government headlines deal with the hurricane, however, which indicates to me a shortcoming that many government sites have in the way that they handle news.  It would be nice if they had an RSS news feed with news and information related specifically to the hurricane and response issues.  If it were done right, it would also make it easier for state agencies to post news and they could also add news coming in from other supporting agencies like FEMA. Weatherbug has been onsite with Charley and has a blog, along with an news feed. 8:00:44 AM    comment []

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Marketing eGov This article in Always On a few weeks ago points out the problem with many e-government initiatives: marketing (or lack of).  Grants.gov has only received 327 of an expected 15,000 applications.  Utah has invested in a variety of marketing initiatives for its services, with I think some success.  Services like jobs.utah.gov have over 70% adoption, while others such as Renewal Express have witnessed more gradual, but steady growth.  Marketing methods have included bus boards, radio, web-based, and press releases.  All have helped, especially the establishment of the utah.gov brand. Pam Perlich, formerly with the Governor's Office in Utah (Planning and Budget), recently published this excellent report on how immigrants are transforming Utah. 3:24:30 PM    comment []

Monday, August 09, 2004

Jerry Mechling to speak on Cross-Boundary Integration Jerry Mechling, the primary author of Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked World, and instructor of the Leadership for a Digital World course at Harvard, will be in Utah on August 19th to speak about cross-boundary integration. Jane Fountain, also with the Kennedy School, has an interesting article on eGovernment on page 29 of the 2004 Taubman Center Report.  She offers this warning: "...it is becoming clear that the new technologies will be used as much for surveillance, monitoring, control, and disinformation as they are to further transparency, accountability, and access to information that promotes human development." The National Center for Digital Governance has launched a website to share information between state and local governments who use DNA in the criminal justice system.  Jane Fountain is the Center's Director.  Lin Salisbury of Utah Interactive recently gave this presentation as part of the Center's workshop on data engineering. Bill refers to California's review of technology alignment which points out a lack of good portfolio management.  This statement could refer to many states, not just California: Despite its value to the state, there are currently no statewide policies, guidelines or evidence of adoption of best practices for technology portfolio management practices. For the most part, policy-makers are still not thinking of technology projects as a portfolio of investments for achieving a shared vision for how the state should serve the people, as pointed out by the Little Hoover Commission in 2000. The report says that California's vital technology programs are in crisis.    It contains several very specific recommendations for improving the management of technology in the state.  I'll be interested to see how they get implemented.  The entire report was made available online last week. It would have been interesting to have someone attend APCO's annual convention this year as we initiate our statewide E-911 governance committee.  I wish there was someone there who would blog the sessions. 12:04:52 PM    comment []

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

National Electronic Health Information Plan From HHS: "Today HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson released the first outline of a 10-year plan to build a national electronic health information infrastructure in the United States. The report, "The Decade of Health Information Technology: Delivering Consumer-centric and Information-Rich Health Care," lays out the broad steps needed to achieve always-current, always-available electronic health records (EHR) for Americans." Several key initiatives are part of this plan: Within 10 years, most Americans should have online access to their health records.  This should also help facilitate the transfer of information between hospitals and physicians. The records will be available through a Medicare beneficiary portal. The plan was prepared by the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.  This position was created by executive order near the end of April. 8:58:57 AM    comment []

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Government Immunity Act Database Senate Bill 55, passed by the 2004 Utah legislature, requires that the Utah Division of Corporations maintain an electronic index of contacts for state and local government where claims against that entity can be filed.  The Government Immunity Act Database is now available online as a result of that bill. 8:32:02 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 David Fletcher.