May 2009 Archives

Persistent cookies have been a perennial policy problem for government web sites.  Privacy concerns drove early policy positions that prohibited or restricted the use of persistent cookies -- small bits of code stored on the user's computer that allows visited web sites to remember you -- on government sites.  (Session cookies expire when the browser is closed, so they were generally exempt from the restrictions.)

A new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) says the old cookie policies have become stale, and deserve a fresh look and a new recipe.  Author Daniel Castro sees an opportunity for the new administration to demonstrate its commitment to transparency by giving persistent cookies a legitimate place on the federal web site menu.  Among his recommendations:

• The Federal CIO should direct OMB to allow the use of persistent cookies on government websites.
• In addition, OMB should be instructed to publish regularly updated guidelines outlining permitted uses of persistent cookies and guidance on best practices, such as specifying the maximum lifespan of persistent cookies.
• The Federal CIO should also work to standardize the language used in website privacy policies across government agencies.

The ITIF has earned a reputation for working through intractable issues, most notably in divining a reasonable path forward on the complex and tricky issues related to broadband.  That same sensibility has now been brought to bear on cookies. 

Castro writes that persistent cookies provide another example of the perils of naming specific technologies in policy, noting:

"... citizens now have tools to ensure that online interactions with government occur on their own terms. Rather than restrict specific technology such as cookies, government regulations should instead focus on protecting civil liberties through continued government oversight on the collection and use of personally identifiable information."

If cookies are comfort food in the real world, a ban on persistent cookies is comforting for policy makers insofar as restrictions prevent bad things from happening.  Castro's point is that the restrictions also prevent from good thing from happening.

The Obama Administration's Office of Science & Technology Policy and the National Academy of Public Administration is running a real time experiment in crowdsourcing this week and next. 

The Open Government Brainstorm comes the same week as the launch of Data.gov and its companion mashup competition.  The Brainstorm begins to model what the President had in mind when he issued the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government on January 21, 2009. 

The live brainstorm also begins to demonstrate what Dr. Beth Noveck, deputy director for Open Government within the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, described in a recent speech to NASCIO as using social networks to move from complaining to changing government through an outcome-oriented platform.  She outlined a short list of principles about the art of the possible in this regard (summarized nicely by Public CIO editor Tod Newcombe here).

At the midway point of the experiment, the Open Government Brainstorm had attracted 197 entries, which have been rated and ranked by other users.  The rankings reflect a clear preference for unrestricted access to government records and data.  Openness on the Internet is consistently highly rated, a proposal for openness through a CSPAN-cable news hybrid is getting a big thumbs down.  While most of the entries are at least tangentially related to theme of transparency -- including one plea to define terms such as transparency, openness, collaboration and participation lest the experiment results in a festival of unmanaged expectations -- the limits of a public forum are also clear.  No amount of rating and ranking can remove rants about Islamic banking, workers compensation and credit card abuse that are shoe horned into the forum.

The Brainstorm runs a new crowdsourcing tool called IdeaScale from Seattle start-up Survey Analytics.  Its a coup for SA that competes in a crowded market of 60 or so online survey software companies, including Salesforce.com's Ideas application.

The official online dialogue continues through May 28.  The results of the experiment itself, and whether it is a catalyst for any noticable change in the way the federal government acts, may provide the clearest answer to the project's central question, "How can we strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative?"

In criss crossing the country talking with government technologists and business managers, I have been highlighting the experiment in co-creation of useful things by the District of Columbia.  You will remember earlier posts about the all-skate data mashup that was Apps for Democracy.  After 30 days of frenetic activity, the contest netted 47 new applications submitted by what might be best called "citizen developers," second cousins to citizen journalists (bloggers) who work in binary code rather than words.

These citizen developers are in growing demand. In fact, the federal government's launch of Data.gov this week came with a non-profit collaborative chaser.  Nisha Thompson, Organizer and Outreach Coordinator with the Sunlight Foundation, dropped me a note earlier today:

You have been blogging about Apps for Democracy so I wanted to let you
know about the Sunlight Foundation's new contest Apps for America: The
Data.gov Challenge.  As you might know Data.gov was launched today.  To
take advantage of the new information available in friendly formats we
wanted to challenge developers to make creative applications.  

You can see the contest information here:
http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/appsforamerica2/.

This is a wonderful, one-time opportunity to show the administration
the good that follows when they make information free. So we need to
seize it. And everyone's help in getting the word out is key.  At the
end of the day, the more great entries the Apps for America contest
receives, the more likely government is to release more data - and the
more data government releases the more transparent, accountable, and
efficient it can be.

As it happens, Apps for America has become a regular part of our conversations out on the road but had not made it to a blog entry yet -- at least until now.  The Data.gov challenge comes with over $20,000 in prize money -- it is what competition in the phrase friendly competition.  The coding commences immediately with the announcement of winners expected at the end of summer.

For its part, Apps for Democracy is back with what it is calling the Community Edition.  The sequel adds the dimension of community-based requirements definition -- that is, asking the people of DC what they would like -- during May, followed by a month of application development during June.  Not insignificantly, they have found another $35,000 in prize money.  There is even a code jam on June 6-7.  Details are available on its website.

The similarly named initiatives do a number of things that are important.  It is a real world test for the open source community and an opportunity for it to prove its worth in making government more transparent and the data it holds more useful.  It is also a test for governments to explore the possibility of engaging citizens where they naturally congregate -- on social networks and around the small glowing screens of their iPhones.

As the open government or transparency movement shifts from the historic focus on public records to data, these feed-driven apps begin to show us what can happen when public data are actually public.

States begin to disburse hundreds of millions of new stimulus dollars in increased (and sometimes retroactive) unemployment benefits today.*  The cash will hit the streets this week.  It comes with the expectation that unemployed people will spend the extra money and it should provide a needed economic bump to local communities soon after. 

This most recent cash infusion does not change the underlying fact that the size of the hole in the economy is much larger than any of the patches that come with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

It is timely then that the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) is expanding the conversation by returning to some of the core disciplines of public finance, cleverly adapted to the challenges of our time.  GFOA makes a useful distinction between long term financial planning and the more urgent notion of fiscal first aid.

The first aid metaphor works.  The promo piece from GFOA reads, in part, "Fiscal first aid tactics provide immediate relief from fiscal distress, and help stabilize the situation so that more comprehensive treatments can be applied."

The association is offering an Internet course on fiscal triage on May 21, 2009, from 2:00 to 3:40 p.m. (ET), featuring a trio of financial EMTs -- Melanie D. Purcell (Assistant Director, Municipal Technology Advisory Services, University of Tennessee); Timothy J. Soave (Manager of Fiscal Services, Oakland County, Michigan); and Shayne Kavanagh (Senior Manager, Research and Consulting Center, GFOA).

Like the first aid courses offered at your local fire house or community center, GFOA's fiscal rescue and survival skills course will "highlight a variety of fiscal first aid techniques, including their advantages and disadvantages and when it is best to use each technique."

Also like community events, GFOA is passing the hat to help cover its costs -- Government employees pay between $65 and $90 depending on whether they are an associaton member.  Private sector folks are charged $110 (member) or $130 (non member).

To register for GFOA's Surviving Financial Distress: Fiscal First Aid Tactics, follow this link.

If you are interested in how information technology can help change the cost structure of service deliver, download a free copy of the Center for Digital Goverment white paper, Be IT Resolved, a guide to modernizing when you have no money.

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* States were able to adjust the benefits payment systems to accomodate the increased Stim benefits and eligibility periods.  Many states missed a crucial implication of the one time stimulus money.  Payments are typically charged to employers through the companion employment tax systems.  For this exercise, the two systems had to be delinked.  According to anecdotal reports, many states found themselves scrambling to make changes to avoid an unintended (and unauthorized) tax increase.  



 
 

Information technology is a curious artifact in government budgeting and spending.  It is deeply embedded in almost everything government does yet gets called out with unique visibility when it comes to itemizing cuts.

The latest evidence of this trend comes from fiscally weary Michigan when the Granholm Administration announced the most recent mid course correction in order to meet the constitutional requirement to keep the budget in balance:

Executive Order 2009-22, the second issued during the current fiscal year, reduces spending by nearly $350 million, achieving $304 million in the general fund savings.  The reductions will reduce services in some areas of government but will allow the state to protect critical functions of state government like education, health care, support for families in crisis, and job creation efforts.

The 23-page executive order provides an agency-by-agency itemization of the reduction package.  It lists the programs that will take hits, and how large they will be.  And in that respect, information technology is treated as a program (rather than just infrastructure or overhead).  The named reductions to IT projects and other tech spend include:

• Agriculture: $89,000
• Attorney General: $6,400
• Civil Rights: $22,500
• Community Health (Health IT Initiative): $1,072,600
• Human Services: $165,000
• Management and Budget: $200,000
• Military and Veterans Affairs: $3,200
• Natural Resources: $2,400
• Department of State: $300
• State Police: $860,000
• Treasury: $75,500

The spending cuts take $2,496,600 out of modernization efforts  -- an unwelcome development to be sure.  But seen against the $304 million in general fund reductions, IT's share is only eight-tenths of 1% -- compare that to a record (inflation adjusted) 23.5% year over year drop in state revenues.  All things being equal, it is probably less than a fair share.  But not all things are equal.  IT still holds the unique promise for changing the cost structure of service delivery in ways that no other program, overhead or infrastructure can.  Perhaps that helps explain why the cuts were held to less than a single percentage.

All of that from a state that is fresh out of options.  The announcement included the now familiar recitation that moves were made necessary to eliminate a budget shortfall "caused, in large part, by the massive restructuring in the domestic auto industry."  Perhaps that now goes without saying, given that the announcement also came the week that this John Rich single was at Number 12 on the CMT country music chart:

After a four month search, the state of Washington has named a new state CIO.  The word came today from the governor's office. The full text follows:

Gov. Chris Gregoire today named Tony Tortorice, a California Information Technology executive with more than 25 years of IT experience in both the private and public sectors, to head Washington's Department of Information Services.

"Tony brings the unique background and wealth of experience required to be successful in this role," Gregoire said. "Our state, like any other business, has to make technological advances if we're going to be successful. I am confident that Tony's strong technology experience will greatly benefit Washington as we develop strategies to streamline state government - which will better serve our communities while improving our bottom line." 

The Legislature created DIS in 1987 to make government information and services more available, accessible and affordable. The agency now employs nearly 450 workers who provide more than 100 technology services. The agency also provides technology leadership and guidance to government agencies across the state.  

"Information technology has tremendous potential to improve government's services to citizens. I came to work for Governor Gregoire because of her commitment to tap that potential," said Tortorice.

A California resident for the past 30 years, Tortorice, 57, is the chief information officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest public K-12 school system. There, he led the recovery of a troubled HR/Payroll implementation. Tortorice was also the senior IT executive for the Los Angeles Community College District, the largest system of community colleges in the nation. Before working with the community college system, he was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Prior to beginning a doctorate program in public administration at the University of Southern California, Tortorice served in the U.S. Navy, where he started his career in IT by installing his command's first word processing system. Tortorice holds a master's degree in systems management from USC, and a bachelor's degree in history from the University of State of New York.

"Tony Tortorice will be an outstanding Chief Information Officer for the State of Washington," said Scott Griffin, former chief information officer at Boeing who served on the interview panel. "He comes to the job with a wealth of technology and public service experience, and is aligned with Governor Gregoire's priorities for our state. Tony's leadership and experience will be a great asset as we move our state forward in the information age."

Gregoire commended DIS Interim Director Jim Albert, who has led the agency since January, when former Director Gary Robinson retired from state service.

"I want to thank Jim for his leadership at DIS. I know it will be an easy transition thanks to Jim's commitment and dedication to the agency," Gregoire said.

Tortorice will begin at DIS July 1, where he will earn an annual salary of $147,000.

Tortorice comes to the role just as the Administration won legislative approval to build a new data center, for which DIS will be the general contractor. He also faces the challenge of working on relationships with customer agencies that have become strained over time as DIS repositioned itself from being a discretionary service provider to a control agency.