Recently in Internet Category

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.

Not that we needed another economic indicator of a recession but the United States Postal Service has one. USPS is expecting a slight drop in the volume of mail sent this holiday season, which runs from Thanksgiving Day through the end of the year.  In broad strokes, officials expect the post office to handle 19 billion pieces of mail, down about a billion from this time last year.

One of those pieces was a an parcel headed to my home.  It was sent registered mail with a tracking number, which gave me an excuse to use the USPS website to do something real.  The taxpayer-owned corporation presents itself well on the web.  The track and confirm feature is prominently placed on the page.  It all works swimmingly until you enter the receipt number and press the "go" button.  Technically, the look up is very fast but the search result is written in code:

"Origin post is Preparing Shipment: We have received notice that the originating post is preparing to dispatch this mail piece."  And such was my introduction to the private language of the post office -- I tried to tease some meaning from these words but eventually conceded I didn't have a clue. 

When Dan Ross leaves his post as Missouri state CIO at the end of next week, he will take the usual box of stuff with him: a few files, a few clippings, an award or two and a copy of his contacts file -- plus his user ID and password for Second Life.

Most of what will be in that box will be mementos of the state's progress on consolidation and collaboration during his tenure.  Then there will be that cat.  An avatar actually.  It is kitten dressed in a tuxedo with a bright red bow tie.  It isn't Dan's avatar but the image was the payoff for the Show Me state's experiment in Second Life.

Working with the state's libraries and universities, Ross' office created an "island of interest" in Second Life where they recreated the land locked state for a new generation of potential public servants.

Ross knew that Missouri was a great place to live, work and raise a family.  The problem was a perceived deficit in the state's coolness quotient.  Said Ross at the time,  "To attract young talent, you have to go where the troops are.  We've been establishing our presence out there, working up information about IT jobs in Missouri, and really working on making our image out there bright and crisp."

Among the visitors to Missouri's Second Life island was that kitten. The 26-year-old computer science grad behind the avatar had not considered Missouri or public service as possible career stop until he rediscovered the state in the virtual world.  He is, in fact, the state's most recent technology hire and a minor media celebrity.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is the state executive who just won't quit.  The transcripts from the wiretaps that lead to his arrest last week are pure [bleeping] comedy gold.  They are also scandalous and a tragic smear on public service.  Pity the honest politician or public official in the land of Lincoln because Governor B-Rod is sucking up all the oxygen.  The tapes and transcripts provide a cautionary tale about politicizing things that should not be politicized.  It should remind us that what is true of an empty senate seat should also be true of information technology.

That lesson was hard learned by the German industrial giant Siemens, which this week agreed to pay the equivalent of $1.4 billion to US and German authorities to settle a sprawling corruption scandal.  The news service AFP reported, "The 161-year-old conglomerate with activities from nuclear power stations to trains [and large information systems] has acknowledged that up to [$1.8 billion US] may have been used illegally to win foreign contracts."  The settlement allows Siemans to keep doing business with governments all around the world, but not by B-Rod-style rules.  Besides, the company appears to have played in a league well above B-Rod's pay scale.

If all of that wasn't enough to induce year-end head scratching, Digital Communities blogger Ulf Wolf provides a fascinating chronology of a transcontinental Internet scam that bobs and weaves (as most frauds do) to seperate the gullable from their money.

Like many organizations, we have been thinking hard about the new year.  The two interrelated themes that emerged as defining 2009 are sustainability and provisioning.  They work as a two-word coupling too, as in "sustainable provisioning."  The vaguely bureaucratic sounding term captures what IT organizations do -- provide, either directly or indirectly -- and how they need to do it in these most unusual times -- in ways that are both ecologically and economically sustainable.

As if to remind us of potential new year's resolutions, Pat Tiernan, the new executive director of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative included this in his otherwise cheery holiday greeting:

•  Information and communications technology (ICT) accounts for more than two percent of global CO₂ emissions and is expected to at least double in the next few years;
• PCs and monitors account for almost 40 percent of the ICT emissions;
• The average desktop PC wastes nearly half the power it pulls from the wall as heat; and,
• 90% of desktops do not utilize power management settings.

Lumps of coal?  Perhaps.  Too hard to deal with amid a bone crushing revenue recession?  Maybe.  Sustainable?  No.  The stuff on which history will judge the heroes and zeroes of this moment?  You bet your life.

President-elect Obama's most recent weekly address, as synonymous with YouTube as his predecessors' was with radio, coupled with an extensive interview on NBC News' Meet the Press, include hopefully inclusive language about information technology as part of the new administration's infrastructure investment plans.

Dating back to the 1920s, roads, bridges, dams and schools have been the pillars of infrastructure or public works projects.  Now, with an estimated $600-750 billion in new or refocused stimulas funding at stake, the working definition of public works is broadening to include things about which we care. 

Notice the use of technology-inclusive language in describing the Obama plan for a massive investment in national infrastructure, which the new president would try to pass immediately once in office:

• Improve the energy efficiency of government buildings;
• Rewire schools "to help our children compete in a 21st-century economy";
• Expand broadband capacity to all US communities, saying it "unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption"; and,
  
• Instituting electronic medical records and reducing the cost of health care delivery by millions of dollars through advanced technologies, because "That won't just save jobs, it will save lives."

Obama also noted that the governors with whom he met last week had a long list of infrastructure projects that were "shovel ready," that is, ready to go and able to get people back to work quickly.
 
Noting again that the US is "the country that invented the Internet," the incoming administration seems intent on paying for some overdue routine maintenance.  Yes, digital technologies will compete with roads and bridges for whatever pot of federal stimulus funding finally becomes available but at least they are in the mix.

UPDATED: DECEMBER 1, 2008 AT 18:42

"Our Politicians Fiddle as Innocents Die," blared the Times of India newspaper on Sunday as the political recriminations began in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The headline coincided with the resignation of India's highest-ranking internal security official, who said he was taking "moral" responsibility for the tragedy.

While the country's black-cat commandos have been largely commended for their work in the street-to-street (and sometimes room-to-room) combat with the assailants, the Indian intelligence, counter terrorism and surveillance services faced almost immediate criticism for allowing the attacks to happen in the first place.  There are even reports that the government had advance warning.

All of this sounds eerily reminiscent.  The early reporting from India suggests that national governments have not learned the lessons from the failures of earlier targets of terrorism.

It is worth saying out loud that the strengths and weaknesses of the evolving media landscape were also on full public view during this latest tragedy, marking an evolution that can be traced back to natural disasters (hurricanes on the gulf coast of this country or the Asian tsnami) if not before.

Consider stories that were published and posted while Mumbai was still under siege. NPR introduced its listeners to Sreenath Sreenivasan, a journalist who also serves as dean of student affairs at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.  Within in an hour of learning of the Mumbai attacks, Sreenivasan "was hosting a Web radio call-in show with other Indian journalists relaying what they knew."  It was the meeting of old and media, with the conventions of journalism tempering the noise that inevitably follows shocking developments.

Elsewhere, a Reuters dispatch reported, "Bloggers across Mumbai fed live updates ... [on the] ...attacks in the heart of India's financial capital, highlighting the social media's new expanding role in news coverage."  It pointed to photos of the attacks on Flikr, frequent updates of an entry on Wikipedia, a steady stream of updates and comments on twitter and myriad bloggers doing what they could to help.  Clearly, these Web 2.0 technologies are as effective as anything we have seen in terms of immediacy -- a particularly powerful attribute when they are in the hands of those on the ground with unique, authoratative information.  

But, and there is are two big buts here: (a) precious few bloggers and even microbloggers are that close and that relevant, prefering instead the comfort of home half way around the world (present company included); and, (b) something disturbing happened to embedded links as they aged.  Dina Mehta blogged furiously from Mumbai during the siege, originally describing herself as "upset and angry and bereft."  But by Sunday night, visitors to her blog learned that she had grown weary of a secondary problem -- inappropriate and even abusive speech. 

In a helpful clarification (including a corrected URL for her post) to the original version of this post, Mehta wrote me: 

I have only been deleting some comments for this reason as stated in my blogpost: "I'm getting a huge load of comments around the politics of religion, of division and hate at my last few posts on the Mumbai terror attacks. While religion and politics may have a lot to do with the state of our world today, my blog's not the forum to air or feed these divisions. I almost feel it's a violation of my own person. So I am deleting them. Sorry. All other comments and conversations are welcome, as always! The #Mumbai Twitter feed is now flooded with them too. I'm stopping watching it. I'm certainly not playing. For all those who feel they have lots to say - I'd recommend they do something more constructive. Start by reading Ingrid Srinath's post titled This is not India's 9/11 ... and Priyanka Joshi's comments there."

[See comments for full text.]

Another blogger, Gaurav Mishra responded to Mehta's decision by setting out a multipoint plan for confronting extremest commentary.  Citizen journalism has no conventions to guide it, and those that comment are prepared to say almost anything under the veil of anonymity.

[As if to remind us of those things at which Web 2.0 is particularly good, Mishra provides links to events or movements spontaneously conceived on or through the Web to benefits of victims of the 11/26 terrorist attacks -- some local, others global -- Nov 30 Tweetup at Leopold Cafe, Facebook Wear White Event, Facebook Support 11/26 Fighters Event.]

At the risk of making a snap judgment even as the events of last week are still unwinding, the response and the reportage were both only partial successes.  Honoring those who served well is important but taking a hard look at what failed may be where the greatest value lies.  It is the only way to perfect or reform institutions about which we care -- government, media and that still amorphous thing called Web 2.0.

A final note.  There is another post about Mumbai that I struggled to write over the long Thanksgiving weekend.  I couldn't get it right.  Thankfully, CBC essayist Rex Murphy did:

We should not see what happened ... in India - what is happening - as something in a distant country, but as a chilling and depraved assault on on what all decent people share in common.

Terrorism is the murder of innocents as a tactic in the service of fanaticism. It is the anti-politics of our time. It is a threat to us all. The blast was in Mumbai, but its vibrations are meant for every civilized city of the planet.

... It is merely right therefore that we give our thoughts to their particular plight - and offer - to these, our fellow citizens - our alert and full sympathy.

The answer is in the room.  The room, in this case, was a discussion of changing the way government works at the conclusion of re:public VII: a gathering of those who choose to lead, an invitation-only event convened in Tucson, AZ by e.Republic's Center of Digital Government.

The answer is in the room, taken more broadly, recognizes the power and potential of internal initiative in changing the way organizations work.

As a case in point, Veterans Day came with a pair of announcements that new veterans-only social networks were launching, not by upstart newcomers but by incumbents that have been protecting and promoting the interests of veterans -- Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, working with the Ad Council, launched CommunityofVeterans.org on Tuesday and the Veterans of Foreign Wars brought www.myvetworks.com online this week too.

But that may be just scratching the surface.  Back in the room in Tucson, the assembled panel had all gone deeper in their respective jurisdictions.  Here are brief summaries of their case stories:

On the Spot: Open Source and Authority to Change

Vivek Kundra, CTO for the District of Columbia, says formal cross-agency agreements to surface and share data has made it possible to democratize DC's data -- for the good of the District and democracy itself.

It has resulted in the surfacing of 260 data feeds across DC government and a 30 percent reduction in requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

As noted in an earlier post, the internal initiative to create the 260 feeds was a necessary precondition to creating Apps for Democracy, the $20,000 competition to mashup the District's data.

This final judging is slated for this Thursday but the contest has attracted a steady stream (with at least one developed every day) of open source apps for platforms from Facebook to iPhones Apps -- including ones that let you know when the next metro train is coming, give you real time notification of crimes and disturbances in progress or allow you to customize tour routes in the DC based on your interests.

Kundra says the Apps for Democracy is part of a deliberate process to rethink the way government is done and in which "citizens and NGOs co-create" the future with and for government.

Kundra says that a future of that time involves confronting entrenched bureaucracies.  He asked for and received the authority to make hiring offers on the spot -- successfully attracting 100 new people into public service that would have otherwise been snapped up by the private sector before government-as-usual could act. A more startling HR move is a parallel mechanism for showing others to the door.  The district has also implemented daily performance reviews to identify people who are simply not working (out) and get them off the public payroll.  The daily performance checks enforce expectations that everybody gets something done everyday.  If you are not getting it done, you have until tomorrow or the next day to start.  And if you never start, your employment ends.

Building an Arc

The City of Sacramento, CA, is partnering with Westinghouse to vaporize and monetize trash.  So says Sacramento City Manager Ray Kerridge who, upon first meeting, appears to be the kind of guy who has a well thumbed first edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Listen a little longer and it becomes clear that he could write Zen and the Art of Repairing Government.

Kerridge enthusiastically detailed joint plans between the city (with a 5% percent ownership stake) and Westinghouse (the majority owner at 95%) to build earth's largest Plasma arc gasification plant.  Riiight, as in Bill Cosby's Noah.

Wikipedia helpfully describes Plasma arc gasification as "a waste treatment technology that uses high electrical energy and high temperature created by an electrical arc gasifier. This arc breaks down waste primarily into elemental gas and solid waste slag, in a device called a plasma converter. The process has been intended to be a net generator of electricity, depending upon the composition of input wastes, and to reduce the volumes of waste being sent to landfill sites."  Right.

That is exactly what Kerridge says the sacred northern California city will do.  Gone will be the expense of trucking Sacramento's garbage to far away landfills.  What's more, the scheme will redeem slag's good name because in this new brownish green economy, slag has economic value and a new name -- feed stock.

And Sacramento produces 5,000 tons of feed stock every day, which they will be able to sell as the raw resource for the gasifier.  The stuff that comes out of the gasifier has added value in the making of green products.  Under the agreement, Sacramento will get a cut of that too.  If that wasn't enough, Kerridge says the city is also looking at the possibility at taking garbage off of other cities (for a fee), provide it as feeder stock (for a fee) and take a third fee for its share of the value-added products.

Amid looks of disbelief and furious note taking in the room, Kerridge -- whose voice still carries a residual British accent -- reminded the audience of an old saying from his native England, "Where there is muck there is money."  The new world translation will be worth watching.

The Education Dividend

The Commonwealth of Virginia's strategic partnerships on infrastructure (Northrop Grumman) and enterprise applications (CGI) are credited for bringing hope to hard scrabble southwest Virginia.  The collaborations are on track to help create 700 jobs.  But the opportunities surface problems of their own -- what if the jobs go begging for want of workers with the needed education and skills? 

For all his work on creating and sheparding the partnerships, Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra loves the challenge that comes with these more complex, stickier questions.  The first part of the state's response is called plugGED In (notice how GED is imbedded in the name) which combines adult literacy, skills assessment, and workforce development.

Thanks to internal initiative, the commonwealth was able to stand the program up in only 6 months.  But they did not do it alone, particularly in the area of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) where the education gap was particularly pronounced.

Virginia reached out to a non-profit "open course" start-up, the CK Foundation, which describes itslef this way on its website:

Our mission is to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide, but also to empower teacher practitioners by generating or adapting content relevant to their local context. Using a collaborative and web-based compilation model that can manifest open resource content as an adaptive textbook, termed the "FlexBook", CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality, locally and temporally relevant, educational web texts. The content generated by CK-12 and the CK-12 community will serve both as source material for a student's learning and provide an adaptive environment that scaffolds the learner's journey as he or she masters a standards-based body of knowledge, while allowing for passion-based learning.

Generating and adapting content relevant to a local context was exactly what is plugGED In needed. Chopra says they issued an open call for contributors and collaborators for their own untextbook that focused on the skills the commonwealth sought to develop.  They received responses from over the country, with would-be collaborators ranging from an 11th grader to major research universities.  The result: a custom open source physics flex book that will be available in February 2009, which Chopra proudly points out is the speed that the market needs and puts the conventional textbook industry to shame.

On the exit question, the panel offered a few random elements on the secrets to change that you can believe in -- and get done:

• Be bold enough to take on entrenched bureaucracies (and have the necessary air cover from your appointing authority in place before you hit the streets);
• Convince your people that their lives will be better;
• Remember that attorneys answer the questions that they are asked -- "what are the barriers to doing this?" gets a very different answer than "how can we do this?";
  
• Push innovation down as far as it can go in the organization.  Innovation is embraced downstream when the people in the trenches believe its theirs;
• Create a war room to prosecute the change with military-style discipline -- but only build a war room if you are relentless about it and willing to stake your career on it; and,
• Remember that innovation cannot come at the cost of consistent and reliable service delivery -- blocking and tackling on the front lines buys permission to keep working on the next new thing just behind the curtain.

There is a lot here to digest, and this summary may not have done their cases justice.  Expect a return to some of these ideas in subsequent posts.  And your thoughts are welcome and encouraged by adding your comments below.

The trip to the seventh annual re:public retreat for those who choose to lead provided a chance to get caught up with friends in Arizona over the weekend.

At breakfast on Sunday, we met with a friend who is a veteran of health care IT systems implementation and training.  She had moved here three years ago after a long career at public hospitals in the northwest.  The then new job was with a hospital system run by a religious order.

There is much in common between the two environments.  The same software, the same organizational resistance, the same tight budgets, the same aggressive time lines and the same team dynamics.  But there was at least one notable difference.

This morning's breakfast came as the launch of the next iteration of the clinical information system loomed only seven days away.  The team was pressing hard against deadlines, working long hours to ready the system for the go live next Saturday at midnight. 

In double checking the final countdown's task list, a colleague reminded our friend that there was one final requirement for the go live -- finding a priest to bless the new system as it went into production.

After a flurry of e-mail, she found a priest who was happy to help but there was one last contingency -- a page at 11:00PM to make sure he was awake at an hour much later than his normal bedtime.

If journalism is still the first draft of history, it is understandable that President-elect Barack Obama dominates the post-election coverage.  The Spectator's blog on all things American has compiled a long list of potential cabinet picks for the Obama Administration -- it is as speculative as any other such list but it provides a clue as to how intently overseas observers are watching every move of the incoming administration.

But there were other personalities in play, including eleven governors.  Here is the briefest of summaries:

Delaware, where it is good to be first (constitutionally): Upstart Jack Markell (D) will replace a fellow Democrat Ruth Ann Minner who was prevented from running for re-election by term limits.  Markell's predecessor was quietly effective in making technologies work for the disproportionately older population of her small state.  It is a good foundation and thoughtful strategy on which to build.

Indiana: Mitch Daniels (R) won re-election in a landslide, an exception to his party's performance elsewhere in the country.  During his first term, Daniels increased infrastructure spending from $244 million in FY05 to more than $867 million in 2007.

Missouri: State Attorney General Jay Nixon (D) will succeed Gov. Matt Blunt, the 38 year old Republican incumbent who decided not to run for a second term earlier this year.  Nixon's campaign centered on what the New York Times called "a scathing critique of Republican control," making continuity through the transition unlikely.

Montana: The iconoclastic Brian Schweitzer (D), who gained national attention for his opposition to REAL ID as a reckless unfunded federal mandate, and who has worked to increase energy production (oil, wind and electricity) at home, won re-election by a wide margin.

New Hampshire: John Lynch (D) easily won re-election by landslide proportions, despite claims by his opponent that the state was losing its New England charm under Lynch's leadership.

North Carolina: Beverly Perdue (D) will build on a sixteen year run during which Democrats have held the governors office.  North Carolina's leadership in the process of becoming digital has ebbed and flowed over the years, perhaps the reflection of strong personalities that pioneered the move into the Internet era and enterprise architecture.  Those initiatives helped earn NC a Top 10 finish in 2004, a full 12 positions higher than where the state has been in both the 2006 and 2008 Digital States rankings -- 22.

North Dakota, which made a six position upward move to 17th place in the 2008 Digital States survey: John Hoeven (R) told reporters that re-election would bring with it a continued emphasis on economic development, particularly through the state's "Centers of Excellence program, an initiative that ties the state's universities to the private sector in order to create higher-paying jobs and new business opportunities for North Dakotans."

Utah, which earned the top ranking in the 2008 Digital States survey: In another counter trend Republican landslide, Jon Huntsman (R) won re-election by a large margin.  Known for his pragmatic approach, Huntsman pioneered an energy-saving four day work week for state employees and where, by design, online self service ensures no loss in public service.

West Virginia: Joe Manchin (D) easily won re-election to a second term, running a track record of infrastructure investments, cutting the size of state government employment two years in a row, and saving as much as $350 million in government reform and streamlining initiatives.

Washington, which placed fifth in the 2008 Digital States rankings: Christine Gregoire (D) has apparently defeated former state senator Dino Rossi (R) in a rematch of a contentious and almost-too-close-to-call election in 2004.  The incumbent governor made an acceptance speech based on declarations by the AP and other media organizations but without benefit of a concession speech by her challenger.  The Rossi campaign says it will make a statement on the race on Wednesday afternoon.  The margins in key counties are wider for Gregoire this time around, making the multiple recounts and court challenge that delayed a final judgement in 2004 unlikely.

What remains unchanged is what Digital Communities blogger Bill Schrier forecasts as "an agonizing election week [ahead] as King County (Seattle) slowly and painfully counts its ballots." Schrier says a little technology could go a long way toward shortening the count, and making it more accurate.  And while he says there is plenty of blame to be assigned to King County itself, the Luddite-like disposition of a little known federal agency is not helping.

With a rough and tumble campaign behind her, Gregoire promised progress on creating a sustainable economy in the self described evergreen state, "It will be green, clean and the envy of the world."

UPDATE AT 11:43 AM: Saying "we just couldn't make up the gap," Republican challenger Dino Rossi conceded the governor's race to the incumbent.

Vermont: Jim Douglas (R) won re-election to his fourth term as governor.  Douglas ran, in part, on the state's "e-State Initiative [which] is already helping to achieve my goal of creating a universal network of high speed wireless phone and internet services that reaches every corner of our state by the end of 2010."