barbara haven: egovernment

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:27:17 GMT

Changing Communication

You might enjoy a Whitehouse slideshow significantly hosted on Flickr under a Creative-Commons-license!

The Queen's message by e-mail for the first time. More used to communicating by letter and telegram, the Queen has taken the unusual step of sending e-mails to 23 young Commonwealth citizens. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:29:39 GMT

Open Source in Government

UK government backs open source. The UK government says it will accelerate the use of open source software in public services. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:29:17 GMT

Accessiblity
Wonder call. Stevie Wonder's plea on gadgets [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:04:50 GMT

Contest: Submit a Video Answer for Democracy

A Video Contest to Illustrate Democracy. The State Department is asking the world to create three-minute videos that answer the question [base "]Democracy is ... ?[per thou] as part of a new contest timed to mark International Democracy Day. [NYT > Technology]

Asked what role the State Department would play in making the contest a success, Mr. Margolis said the department[base ']s sponsorship [base "]does add a sense of legitimacy and gravitas to what we are trying to do.[per thou]

Legitimacy and gravitas are fine cards to bring to the table.

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:55:12 GMT

Going Mobile?

Bits: Kleiner Perkins Starts an iPhone Blog. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm that is investing its $100 million iFund in applications for the iPhone and iPod touch, has a new blog that will discuss trends in mobile. [NYT > Technology]
I tried some government site on my iPod Touch. Its browser has none of the usual font size settings, which increases only with pinching down and spreading up fingers. Works for me. Mostly.

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:32:10 GMT

Government and Web 2.0 Resources

From slideshare, December 2007 presentation "Web 2.0 for Government 1.0" at a government event in Hawaii. I believe there is no chance I would ever be able to justify a research trip to Hawaii, so seeing the slides will suffice for now.

| View | Upload your own

I wish Hawaii great experiences when they are bringing in Web 2.0. I hope those "low-hanging fruits" (see slide 14) work well for Hawaii. His selection is

RSS
Microformats
OpenID
Mashups
Mobile
Podcasts (audio & video)

I'd also put RSS very near the top ROI for government.

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:26:20 GMT

Counting the Vote

With improvements, e-voting could be good, says researcher.. Researcher who found vulnerabilities in California's e-voting systems looks ahead to better auditing. [CNET News.com]

California's recent vote is still being counted. So for the future timely election results evoting needs improvement. The link mentions a keynote at ShmooCon. The Shmoo Group is a non-profit think-tank comprised of security professionals from around the world who donate their free time and energy to information security research and development.

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:25:23 GMT

Larry Lessig on Open Government Data

In early December 2007 30 open government advocates gathered to develop a set of principles of open government data. The meeting, held in Sebastopol, California, was designed to develop a more robust understanding of why open government data is essential to democracy.

Of these principles I'm most involved with accessiblity. At delicious social bookmarking site, I've tagged loads of resources with accessibility.
My accessibility tags at delicious go back to January 2006--almost two years of concern.

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:56:39 GMT

Copyright Ban Sought in Europe

What's Online: Piracy and Privacy. The recording industry is seeking legislation in Europe that would require the filtering of Internet connections to block the illicit transfer of copyrighted material and more. By DAN MITCHELL. [NYT > Technology]

And how does anyone detect these copyrighted materials and possible illicit transfer? Sometimes a government has a public awareness campaign where it really wants the material copied and sent to all and sundry, but the government copyrights the webpages, posters, podcasts etc. Wouldn't the "public good" be served by copying and sending them to everyone we know is interested?

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:42:12 GMT

CA.gov gets an Egov Site Review at Libraryola

At Libraryola, reviews of both the CA.gov and the Governor's homepage note a lack of news, feeds, podcasts and more missing. The tagline at Libraryola is "We Want Government Information." I've noticed that sentiment at many blogs and wikis.

Libraryola is a weblog about trends in government information, primarily focusing on e-government written by Chris Zammarelli, a graduate student at the University of Marylandâo[dot accent]s College of Information Studies.

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:53:20 GMT

Does the US need a CTO?

Over at Lawrence Lessig's blog earlier in December, he writes that the Stanford Center for Internet and Society is now in the early planning stages for a conference to be held April 18-19, 2008 about the idea of a CTO for the United States government.

Obama suggested the CTO idea in his tech program, but this conference has "nothing to do with the Obama campaign."

Lessig has a page on his wiki to invite suggestions for the planning of the conference. To be informed when final plans are made, send a note to uscto@pobox.com.

Good online planning will be interesting to read.

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:52:12 GMT

Technology Workshops for San Francisco's Low-income

Tenderloin Tech Day. Video: Tenderloin Tech Day. In San Francisco's Tenderloin district, amid liquor stores and boarded-up buildings, a partnership of nonprofits earlier this month sponsored the first "Tenderloin Tech Day." The half-day workshop was open to anyone in the low-income neighborhood with a tech problem. CNET News.com's Kara Tsuboi stopped by and chatted with people about their broken laptops, software-less hard drives, and their first-ever Internet experiences.
[CNET News.com]

As our government disseminates more information digitally and more government services go online, reaching the entire population becomes more important.

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:37:53 GMT

Facebook Power 2007

Power politics. Michael Geist looks at how Facebook can affect legislation [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Michael Geist wrote:

Not only had tools like Facebook had an immediate effect on the government's legislative agenda, but the community that developed around the group also led to a "crowdsourcing" of knowledge.

In Facebook California Secretary of State Debra Bowen is in a group I belong to. She's the only other "State of California" person I've encountered there. I found people from my college (University of Michigan), my high school and several companies I've worked with.
The Secretary of State's website has changed. Now it's much lighter and more open. The court at the Secretary of State's has the a wall with the words on the website top banner. I took photos when I was there last year.

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:19:19 GMT

Egovernment Customer Satisfaction Slipping Slightly

Satisfaction with e-gov sites slips a bit with users. User satisfaction with government Web sites slipped slightly for the third straight year, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. [Computerworld Breaking News]

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:43:31 GMT

Evoting Costs in France

French e-voting study highlights hidden costs. A report on the deployment of e-voting systems around France concludes that electoral districts choosing to use the machines face significant costs, some hidden. [Computerworld Breaking News]

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:31:28 GMT

Should Government "Crowdsource" a Project?

Could a large number of citizens help with a government project? Crowdsourcing is a technique of taking a project and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. It can also be an easy way to get free user feedback and satisfy consumers' demands. It's an approach used in a variety of fields, including software development and PC manufacturing.
More about crowdsourcing in the private sector at Should your company 'crowdsource' its next project?[Computerworld Breaking News] As a wiki video said "All of us are smarter than one of us."

Compare with Hack, Mash & Peer: Crowdsourcing Government Transparency by Jerry Brito, Geo. Mason Univ, October 2007 (paper download)

Abstract:

In order to hold government accountable for its actions, citizens must know what those actions are. To that end, they must insist that government act openly and transparently to the greatest extent possible. In the Twenty-First Century, this entails making its data available online and easy to access. If government data is made available online in useful and flexible formats, citizens will be able to utilize modern Internet tools to shed light on government activities. Such tools include mashups, which highlight hidden connections between different data sets, and crowdsourcing, which makes light work of sifting through mountains of data by focusing thousands of eyes on a particular set of data.

Today, however, the state of government's online offerings is very sad indeed. Some nominally publicly available information is not online at all, and the data that is online is often not in useful formats. Government should be encouraged to release public information online in a structured, open, and searchable manner. To the extent that government does not modernize, however, we should hope that private third parties build unofficial databases and make these available in a useful form to the public. [emphasis mine.]

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:16:52 GMT

California has a new State CIO

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced the appointment of Teresa (Teri) M. Takai as the state chief information officer.

Takai served as director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology (MDIT) since 2003, and also serves as the state's chief information officer. In this position, she has restructured and consolidated Michigan's resources by merging the state's information technology into one centralized department to service 19 agencies and over 1,700 employees.

Additionally, during her tenure at the MDIT, Takai led the state to being ranked number one four years in a row in digital government by the Center for Digital Government.
(More later)

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:59:47 GMT

State of Massachusetts has a Senior's Rx Plan Data Breach

Data theft touches 150,000 Massachusetts seniors. Senior citizens who participate in a Massachusetts insurance program have received word that their personal information may have fallen into the hands of an identity thief. The state of Massachusetts is warning 150,000 members of its Prescription Advantage insurance program that their personal information may have been snatched by an identity thief. [Computerworld Breaking News] They provide few details of this breach's nature or exactly whose information "might have been" involved and how.

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:16:34 GMT

In-Demand Tech. Jobs at Dept. of Labor's CareerVoyages.Gov

Feds provide guide for better jobs at Department of Labor's Career Voyages. I got there from Why you need to take risks. The single biggest factor holding people back from fulfilling their dreams is unwillingness to take risks. Cycles aside, the high-tech job market will be booming for years to come; that's a safety net people should be taking advantage of. [CNET News.com]

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:11:56 GMT

Know Your Carbon Footprint?

Data centers, families and individuals plan to decrease their energy use, or carbon footprint. The Internet has several websites that you can use to calculate your own carbon emissions footprint. California State and Consumer Services Agency Assistant Secretary Jerry Martin sent these carbon footprint calculators:

Try one or more of these sites to help determine your own contributions to climate change. While many sites are available, he considered these among the "most comprehensive and user friendly."

These sites merely give estimates so don't be alarmed at your scores. The numbers may be different when the same numbers are plugged into other sites.

They have a goal that everyone learns their carbon footprint number so that we can all work to lower them.

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:18:17 GMT

Populous States' Portals Web Analytics

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 04:47:00 GMT

CalPERS and then New York State Pensions Let Out Retirees' Information

First California, now New York lets pensioner personal information slip out. A laptop thought to contain Social Security numbers and other personal data on 280,000 New York pensioners is missing. [Computerworld Breaking News]

Last week CalPERS, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, inadvertently printed social security numbers on brochures about an upcoming election that were mailed to about 445,000 state retirees.

The privacy breach happened after an employee sent a disk containing the numbers to the printer responsible for the brochures. The disk was only supposed to contain the mailing list's names and addresses.

According to Computerworld, that error prompted several changes at the CalPERS, including new security awareness training for employees and a new process that involves sign-offs from three individuals before personal information can be released.

On a related subject, that of posting personally identifiable information such as social security numbers on websites, in the past, Google could search for numbers within a range on a particular domain, but that search to check for possible social security numbers posted on state websites now seems to return an error.

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 04:27:05 GMT

More IT Spending 4th Quarter

U.S. government IT spending spikes this quarter, Input says. U.S. government agencies will spend a projected $22 billion on IT projects in their fourth fiscal quarter, according to a report from Input. [Computerworld Breaking News]

California State Government has a budget now. When the budget is signed and published, we should have some indication of next year's IT spending in State Government here.

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 03:19:31 GMT

More about eVoting

Reports on eVoting continue to give it poor marks for security by ZDNet's Phil Windley --Windley mentioned three different articles on eVoting over the last little while that interested him, among them: E-voting systems vulnerable to viruses and other security attacks, new report finds - This report documents the efforts of two teams of security researchers from UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

You can go read there for yourself. It may not be brand new but against evoting the evidence increases in the US and UK .

ZDnet gives odd sentence fragments with the "blog this" option.

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:13:44 GMT

How Long Should Government Retain Email?

Xeni Jardin of Xeni Tech covered the problem of holding onto emails for NPR. Links and information at boingboing include:

...policies are all over the map, there's no consistency, and government watchdogs believe more frequent purging means the public loses access to valuable historic information.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty recently ordered that all e-mails not flagged as "save" by city government workers will be deleted and purged from the city's email system in January of 2008. After that initial purge, all city employee email older than 6 months which is not specifically flagged as "save" will be auto-deleted.

The more e-mail government employees send, the more there is to store, costing taxpayers money. But costs must be balanced against the need to preserve history, and ensure government transparency. If individual officials decide which emails to save and which to delete, will they choose to save potentially incriminating or embarassing emails?

Both IT budgets and public knowledge make demands, so what's a person with a growing email archive to do? On an older machine at home I had a corrupt email archive that I suspect had become too big for the most popular mail client. I've resolved never to let that happen again. In that case, Thunderbird email client saved me, and imported the corrupt gigantic archive without losing the folders that spared me from horrendous searches in that dark pool of old email.