FastGov: Where Government is Going

The day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered his final state of the state address, the California Office of the Chief Information Officer codified another small part of the Administration's legacy -- an official position on the use of open source software.

Gary Robinson has been named the new chief financial officer for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS).  Word of the appointment came in an e-mail announcement on Friday.

The move reunites Robinson with his former deputy at the Department of Information Services.  Tracy Guerin left DIS in July to assume the newly created role of Chief of Staff at DSHS in July.

Robinson's tenure as DIS director ended abruptly in December 2008.

It will be a working weekend for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and the contractor it hired to quickly rebuild recovery.gov in anticipation of this Saturday's state American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) reporting deadline.

The countdown to October 10 has been a particularly intense fire drill for Maryland-based Smartronix, Inc, the company that won the contract to get the federal recovery spending site ready for prime time.  (The contract is worth an initial $9.5 million through January 2010, with the option to almost double in value - $18 million - by 2014.)

The initial roll up of stimulus dollars comes with a myriad of challenges.  On the operational side, as recently as a month ago, only 14,000 of an expected 200,000 ARRA recipients had registered to report.  Also during the countdown, even registered recipients confronted still ambiguous data standards.

On the expectations side, the much anticipated inaugural recovery.gov rollup is a key test of whether the Obama administration can deliver on its promises of transparency.  What's more, the administration is also betting the mid term elections that the data will demonstrate that the huge $787 billion stimulus package is putting people back to work and goosing a moribund economy.  It will be judged by the administration's own data -- regardless of how clean or complete they are.

That is a lot to put on the shoulders of a website.  To further complicate the expectations game, recovery.gov has head-to-head competition from the private sector.  The data aggregator and reseller Onvia has built recovery.com (which it mirrors for the time being at recovery.org) through data mining and old school clipping services.  NPR compared the dot-gov and dot-com sites, and any unique value of the federal government effort was not clear to the reporter.

The board, working with the General Services Administration among other federal agencies and a handful of technology companies (including IBM, SAP and Microsoft), has been helping states and localities get ready for this Saturday's reporting deadline.

Stuart McKee, a former state CIO in Washington and now National Technology Officer with Microsoft, has been part of that campaign.  In criss crossing the country, he came to a number of conclusions about what we are about to see,

If the attempt is just to expose the data, I think that would be disappointing - just to say, 'here's the data - do with it what you want.' I think government has fiduciary responsibility to organize that information and present it in a way that people can digest.

Acknowledging that there are no second chances to make a first impression, McKee thinks the effort must begin again come Monday morning,

If the key stake holders at the federal and the state level particularly will gather together and create the next set of requirements with the lessons learned and set the expectations [for what comes next].  This is a learning process.  This isn't going to be perfect.  And we are going to get better and better incrementally each time.

Ever the optimist, McKee sees a promising second act for all things transparency,

If we can set that expectation, I think two things will happen. One, government will continue to improve and get better; and, two, citizens will be very, very pleased with the results.

To hear more of my conversation with McKee, listen to the most recent DS-50 podcast.  Download it here or subscribe to the series on iTunes.

The federal government used the conclusion of its two day summit on distracted driving to announce a complete ban on text-messaging by truckers, bus drivers and railroad engineers, all of whom are subject to federal regulation.  It will also compel states to impose similar restrictions on drivers of passenger cars at the risk of losing federal transportation funding for local road projects.

Earlier in the week, the president signed an executive order prohibiting federal employees from texting while driving government vehicles or when driving private vehicles on government business.  Rules for enforcing the ban are due in about 90 days. [1]

In an earlier post, I suggested that analog and digital distractions should be treated the same way under law.  To those ends, I wondered allowed about how the summit would define distractions.  Much of the summit focused on digital gadgets -- cell phones chief among them. 

But as Tom Mutchler from Consumer Reports chronicled in his extensive postings from the summit, distractions were broadly defined and compared.  Distractions are not just a device or a thing.  Instead, risk changes with the behavior required by the distraction -- and the role of the person being distracted.  Mutchler's summary follows:

Dr. John Lee, a human factors expert from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, aptly made the point when he noted that when a driver changes roles--they become a mother/father, boyfriend/girlfriend, diner, or worker instead of a driver--their risk increases.
 
Indeed, there are plenty of old-school distractions--eating, drinking, grooming, talking to a passenger, dealing with children -- as well as cell phone use and texting. Making those illegal is even harder than proposing legislation on the design and use of electronic devices. But several presentations today made it clear that there is a difference in the risk profile of "old-school" and "new-school" distraction.
 
First off, scientifically, there are different kinds of distractions.

• Visual distractions take your eyes off the road.
• Manual distractions take your hands off the wheel.
• Cognitive distractions take your mind off the road.

Simple in-vehicle tasks like tuning a radio (assuming you're not navigating a complex in-car multidirectional controller) have little cognitive load, a slight visual load (a quick glance), and a brief manual load. Adjusting the radio is often accepted as a baseline for comparing the amount of distraction of other controls. Various other "old-school" distractions each register differently with respect to these demands.
 
But texting is a "perfect storm." It requires you to look at the keyboard, manually manipulate the keys, and think about what you're writing. This means texting is a visual, manual, and cognitive distraction all in one.
 
Beyond the science, there is naturalistic study data that show the relative risks of these behaviors. Data from Virginia Tech shows that texting increases your odds 23.2 times of having a crash. That's off the charts compared to drinking (even odds), eating (1.6 times), or applying make-up (3.1 times.) Some distractions, like talking to a passenger or adjusting the radio, actually improved safety and had a protective effect, possibly by combating fatigue or having the passenger serving as a collision warning device.
 
One particular "old-school" distraction was more dangerous than the others. Reaching for a moving object increased the odds of a crash by 8.8 times. It might make a mess, but it's safer to let your bag fly off the front seat and hit the floor than to grab for it. (It's even safer to leave it in the trunk.)

Marketers were busy during the summit.  My single post on the subject attracted dozens of comments from folks with something to sell.  Many of them argued that text to speech technologies can reduce the risk of digital distractions because it keeps your hands on the wheel, if not always your mind on the road.  My favorite pitch, though, was for a reinforced super bumper.  The manufacturer argues, essentially, that getting hit by a distracted driver is inevitable -- so we might as well armor up our vehicles.
 

"This is not dissimilar to solving the problem of drunk driving," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood of the rise of texting while driving.  The comment came just before the opening of a two-day summit on distracted driving convened by LaHood in Washington, DC.

As NPR reported this morning,

Eighteen states and the nation's capital now have laws that ban sending or receiving text messages while driving. Six states and the District of Columbia prohibit all drivers from talking on hand-held cell phones; 21 states and D.C. bar novice drivers from all cell phone use. Proposed national legislation would reduce federal highway funds to states that fail to ban text messaging while driving.

There is a growing litany of drivers distracted by cell phones and mobile devices who have been found responsible for crashes that have resulted in serious injuries and deaths.

LaHood says he is particularly concerned that young drivers are particularly prone to text while behind the wheel, creating one distraction too many for the most inexperienced of motorists.

The transportation secretary is not presuming on the outcome of the summit but notes with interest that the National Transportation Safety Board and some 500 companies have imposed a total ban on the use of mobile devices.  LaHood does say that severe enforcement of any new rules will probably be necessary to change behaviors behind the wheel.

A total ban would have the unintended consequence of prohibiting access to useful tweets from departments of transportation.  The twitter feed from the Washington State DOT is a useful companion on my commutes up and down the often troubled I-5 -- the information is often more timely than radio traffic reports.  The 140 character dispatches are written in a cryptic and informal style that is easy to consume and not without personality -- as in, "Good news: US 97 Beebe bridge is open to one lane traffic."  It would be a pity to forbid the use of something this helpful in the place where it can do the most good -- the cab of a car.

The twitter feed began to foreshadow the themes of the summit a week ago, "We ask that you "Know Before You Go" check our tweets before you travel or let passengers tweet. Please no texting & driving!"

And then there was this early this morning,

RT @whitehouse DOT Distracted Driving Summit - watch live today & tomorrow. Starting now: http://bit.ly/idcZ2 #d2summit

It will also be interesting to see how the summit defines distractions.  Cell phones and mobile devices?  Clearly.  What about the radio, MP3 player or video monitor?  Or a 48 ounce fountain drink propped precariously in a 16 ounce cup holder? Or a greasy drive-through breakfast sandwich that oozes egg onto your lap?  Or the book propped up against the steering wheel?  Or the vanity mirror on the sun visor used to aid in the application of lipstick during the morning commute?

LaHood says he wants to start a national conversation about the hazards of distracted driving.  Good.  But ought not that conversation and any new rules treat digital and analog distractions the same?

Just over one week from today, Tuesday, September 22 at 11:00AM, we're hosting an online forum on the state and local government and the developing plan for a national broadband strategy.

Former Virginia Secretary of Eugene Huang is now the Director of Government Operations for the FCC's National Broadband Task Force.  He has roughly 155 days to finish the National Broadband Plan under a deadline imposed by Congress as part of ARRA. 

Huang is looking for state and local government input on the issues of (a) operational efficiencies in government operations, (b) new initiatives such as telehealth and the smart grid, and (c) citizen engagement.

We've assembled an ad hoc kitchen cabinet for him for the day:

• Mike Locatis, CIO, State of Colorado
• Otto Doll, CIO, State of South Dakota
• Paul J. Cosgrave, Commissioner, Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications (DoITT), City of New York
• Bill Schrier, Chief Technology Officer, City of Seattle

We're holding time for your questions so hold the day, log in and call in.

Huang and his team are blogging at broadband.gov, where you also find a repository of the collected policy comments and a video archive of its round table meetings.  It would be a good place to see where the conversation started and then join in the discussion during the webinar.  Register here for the webinar.  It is an important moment in the development of a national broadband strategy.  Be part of it.

The Government of South Africa is hosting its tenth annual SITA GovTech Conference next week in Durban under the theme of "Doing IT for the Citizens."  Actually, the conference logo includes a scribbled in "C" between the "I" and "T," indicating an embrace of the vaguely European sounding Information and Communications Technology (ICT).  Communications in this context is synonymous with connectivity -- broadband, wireless connectivity in a growing number of cases.

The conference is being organized around the citizen centric government -- with a look back at the first decade and setting the tone for the next ten years.  As you would expect, it is a gathering of those who have been doing the work to share best practices and practical work arounds on common challenges.

Organizers have invited some international speakers -- ranging from Microsoft to the Open Source Software Institute, plus the heads of the Public Technology Institute to UK's non-profit Gov3. The CIO from the Canadian province of Manitoba, David Primmer, will be there too.

And a couple of govtechbloggers -- govtech as in GT or Government Technology magazine -- will be there too.  Friend and fellow govtech blogger  Dan Lohrmann, whose day job is as Chief Technology Officer for the State of Michigan, will speak on securing government in a digital world on Wednesday. Two days earlier, I will debut an international edition of Steal This Idea, a digest of best and emerging practices in digital service delivery.  I will also moderate a panel discussion among government ministers on assessing the ten year old campaign for citizen centric government in South Africa, with a view to defining what should be done in the next decade to realize the potential of electronic government.

The trip is still a few days away but we're looking forward to meeting a new friend.  SITA organizer Mariette du Plessis has made the process of planning a trip half way around the world look easy.

Conference information is available here. 

A copy of my presentation is available here.  As always, check against delivery.

SITA is planning on streaming the keynote and plenary session online.  Assuming the availability of reasonably priced hot spots, I'll update this blog white there.  Failing that - or in combination with that if all goes well - I'll tweet from Durban at www.twitter.com/pwtaylor.

The doors re-opened at the Seattle Public Library yesterday after an eight day closure aimed at saving $650,000, thereby closing about two-thirds of the library's budget short fall this year.  The City of Seattle says there is more to come.  It is already planning to furlough 6,400 city employees for 10 days later this year to save an estimated $20 million.

The scenario is not unique.  Governments all across the country are confronted with the same harsh budget realities and many are opting for temporary closures and furloughs.  What makes the Seattle Public Library noteworthy is its decision to shut down its website for the week too.

The site was replaced with a single page of multilingual notices of the closure, the reason for the shut down and a phone number where users could leave a comment for the library board.  When the site returned yesterday, it was business as usual -- without a word of explanation or regret.

In the midst of the closure, I sparked a bit of a debate with one of my Twitter friends with this tweet:

Seattle Libraries closed this week due to budget cuts -- took its website down too to make sure everybody feels the pain. Good move?

My correspondent disagreed with the premise of my tweet:

I don't think that was the reason. The one week full closure was cheaper than anything else, and the website takes staff.

I protested:

Keeping the site up would have been a better strategy long term - has the feeling of all or nothing ... so much for self serve.

To which she responded:

I think they analyzed that.... Cuts are hard for all now. We're past service as usual.

On that we can agree.  We are past service as usual.  Given that the city has already signaled to do it again -- and do it bigger next time -- it is not too early to plan.

I don't think the blunt force approach to its web presence is sustainable.  Next time, the site should carry a notice of what will not be available during the closure.  Obviously, there will be no librarians to staff the 24/7 ask a librarian chat service -- nor will be there anybody to process inter library loan reservations.

That said, the library's online offerings of databases and web sites and digital books & media can and should stay up when everything else is down.  In fact, these services should be expanded in anticipation of service delivery in the post "service-as-usual" era.

Does this raise the specter of libraries without librarians during furloughs?  Perhaps.  I am not unsympathetic to the professional concerns about job security and staffing levels.  But the Internet did not jeopardize these jobs.  A financial crisis did. 

The Internet will not replace library science professionals or administrative staff.  But the latter can use the former to maintain even a diminished level of service delivery during tough financial times.  It will require structural change.  Between now and the next shut down, this library and other public agencies have an opportunity to realign their service offerings with surgical precision.  Because the next time, and there will be a next time, the blunt instrument will be wielded by external players.  The choice is to design the future -- again, even a diminished one -- by making tough decisions now or have a future not of our making imposed on us later.

The Wall Street Journal reports,

Diebold Inc. (DBD) has sold its money-losing U.S. election-systems business, just seven years after acquiring it amid hopes of rising demand for voting technology upgrades in the wake of the 2000 presidential election fiasco.

The company will take a $50 million loss on the sale of what is now called Premier Election Solutions to rival Election Systems & Software, which will pay $5 million for Diebold's election machine business.

The move effectively consolidates the electronic voting business in the hands of two privately held companies -- Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems.  Consolidation is not good news for elections watchers.  In a broadcast interview, Candice Hoke of the Center for Election Integrity at Cleveland State University warns that the sale "creates tremendous power over our voting system and that concerns a number of people."

Even with the sale, Diebold still faces lawsuits from a number of local government.

In explaining the reasons for the sale, Diebold spokesman Mike Jacobson told NPR that structural problems in government were the root of the company's failure,

When we acquired globally election systems in early 2002, we did so with a number of assumptions such as the development of consistent state and federal guidelines for voting systems.  Many of those assumptions never materialized.

Ironically, the biggest player in the voting-machine business seems to have missed the defining characteristic of American civics - home rule.

Techonology blogger John C. Dvorak isn't shy.  He now fancies himself an investigative journalist with an exclusive expose on alleged lapses in the biography of federal CIO Vivek Kundra.  The headline declares Dvorak's conclusion, Kundra is a "Phoney."  Dvorak's chief allegation is over Kundra's academic credentials, which drew follow on response and defense elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Tim O'Reilly, the publisher who has taken a shine to electronic government of late, tweeted, "Anyone who has spent more that a few minutes w Kundra knows he is qualified and doing a great job.  Can't say same for Dvorak."  

Kundra's employer, the Office of Management and Budget, also came to his defense.  OMB spokesman Ken Baer told BeliefNet, "This is a total fabrication and gross distortion of Vivek Kundra's record."

When you are explaining, you're losing.  Kundra is spending this week explaining. That is too bad because while the original post may be what now passes for investigative journalism, it falls short of old school journalistic norms in some significant ways -- sourcing and confirmations are suspect and non-existent respectively.

The original post is flawed although it raised Dvorak.org to 39,226th spot on alexa's traffic rankings, which may have been the point of the exercise to begin with.  

The comments on the post are perhaps the most disturbing part of the story.  The commenters display overt hostility toward government in general and the administration in particular -- perhaps no surprises there.  We also see more than a little professional envy from people who think they are better qualified for Kundra's job than he is and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of CIO -- not surprising either but an insight into what is wrong with what is euphemistically called the IT community.

Some, not all, but some commenters took Dvorak's post as an opening to opine on Kundra's character based solely on race and an attendant guilt by association.

Wrote one,

"The Indian Mafia called India, Inc. strikes again!  First they cleaned out Silicon Valley, then Wall St., then Detroit.  Now they are going after the last lucrative sector: government contracting.  You can bet this fraud will be granting all kind of billion $ contracts to India, Inc. companies.  Maybe he is an India Inc. plant ... We had better wake up quick America."

Wrote another,

"I also don't have support from the India mafia, which seems to thrive on promoting each other rather than do any real work--see the problems with an Indian contractor for the DC government. Although Kundra may have had no ties to that contractor, he was part of this self-promoting DC-area Indian circle."

And another xenophobic zinger broadens the brush stroke,

"... people lie, especially on resumes, especially foreigners."

Absolutely inexcusable.  With critics like these, Kundra should stop explaining.