Recently in Internet Category

"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 were greeted by a corrupted headline, "Why I am deleting comments Error 404 - Not Found."  Another blogger, Gaurav Mishra, explained why in -- ironically enough -- one of the remaining comments on Mehta's blog.  In short, some of the comments were deemed extremest and even "evil".  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."

With only one day remaining in the presidential election campaign, as many as a third of eligible voters have already cast their votes through absentee, mail-in and early voting.  There are reports that Senators McCain and Obama will both break with tradition by campaigning on election day.  At issue, voter turnout.

Political organizing is powered by hybrid systems that combine aspects of data integration, customer relationship management and business intelligence for political purposes: canvassing and voter contact on the front lines, and casework, donor, field, membership and volunteer management in the background.

The names of the systems have changed over years and their design, architecture and functions have been imporved but the underlying purpose remains the same.  The RNC's Voter Vault, a web-based tool is now in its third release; and the Voter Activation Network (VAN) replaced Demzilla and is the platform behind the DNC's VoteBuilder, the Obama campaign's volunteer management system, and the organizing tools used by organized labor (AFL-CIO and the SEIU) among others.

It brought to mind a chestnut from the archives about the business intelligence systems used by the two major parties to get out the vote (GOTV):

"Too close to call."  It was David Brinkley's election night epitaph to the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon match up; as it was for Peter Jennings forty years later during the long Florida night that left the Bush-Gore contest in dispute.

With results that were within the margin of error of manual, mechanical and digital vote counts, the television networks reworked their outdated predictive models and Congress - through the Help America Vote Act - set a timetable for the introduction of electronic voting machines, which will be in limited release this year in anticipation of a full roll out in 2006.  Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines are the new hanging chads of American politics, sparking a debate over disenfranchisement amid concerns about validating that every vote is counted as it was cast. 

If the e-voting debate is over which votes are counted, the full up implementation of CRM in presidential politics raises equally important questions about which votes are cast.  Complex and highly partisan Customer Relationship Management is being deployed by both major parties to help tip election results in their favor, district by district, mobilizing their respective bases and wooing fickle swing voters.

The Democratic National Committee has built Demzilla with demographic, geographic and psychographic data on 158 million Americans; the Republican National Committee has locked up the same kinds of data on 165 million Americans its Voter Vault.  Given the sensitivity of the information that they contain, it belies otherwise sophisticated political apparatuses that both systems have been christened with names that are, at once, sophomoric and Orwellian.  What's more, after limited use in local and state races, Demzilla and Voter Vault go head to head it their first presidential throw down next month.

The number of names is less important than the contextual data that wraps around each name.  "We have a numeric coding system," explained Washington state Republican chairman Chris Vance in a recent interview about the vault, "One is a hard Republican.  Two is a soft Republican.  Three is an independent.  Four is a soft Democrat.  Five is a hard Democrat.  Six is someone who we reached, but refused to answer our questions.  A zero is someone we have never been able to reach, we know nothing about."

The first five categories bring a certain scientific precision to the art of mobilizing the base - but the political prize is in converting zeros to partisans by election night.  And that puts political CRM in the cross hairs of the same groups that have targeted e-voting as a threat to democracy.

At issue are the inferences that can be drawn from the manipulation of previously discrete data elements including all the usual stuff about who we are and how to reach us plus inferences gleaned from our reading habits and organizational affiliations.  Layer on the answers to the questions about whether we vote and make political contributions (derived from secondary use of public records) and our views on war, gun ownership and abortion (which we may volunteer to the earnest, PDA-touting campaign volunteer at our door) and we end up with targeted messages that serve up 'my president, my way,' apparently unaware that they look different to people that have been placed in one of the other buckets.

One academic observer has gone so far as to condemn the parties' segmentation strategies because he claims they are not just correlated to, but the cause of, a precipitous fall in voter participation.  Curiously, the complaint does not appear to extend to the legion of advocacy groups that use the same methods, punctuated by media campaigns and even lines of clothing, to convert non-voters to political participants.

This could all be a hideously bad idea.  Or it could be a defining characteristic of a new civic engagement that solves some old problems while creating new ones.  A century ago, Edward Berneys, alternatively known as the father of American public relations or propaganda, envisioned manipulating public opinion as an "unseen mechanism of society [that] constitutes an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.  A generation ago, we came to accept a seemingly progressive idea that the "personal is political."  Now, we have systems that automate both.

And if this year's election is again too close to call, the winners will know they are onto something.  And so will the losers.

The original column appeared as "Political CRM: Swing voters and the systems that love them" in Government Technology magazine in October 2004.

SEATTLE - Here is the material from the round table discussion on winning national recognition as a digital school board, presented to and discussed with delegates to the annual meeting of the National School Board Association (NSBA).

Click on the video to stream it from YouTube; to download a opy of the presentation, click on its awkward but information-laden file name --
10-08NSBARoundTable.pdf

There is not a public official alive that likes to be at the bottom of a 50-state ranking, especially on close-to-home issues such as education, poverty and economic development.  Even seemingly arcane rankings of readiness for the Year 2000 date field roll-over or maturity in delivering government services online can raise the ire of people associated with states in the back half of the pack.

What is worse is when there is really no honor in being in the top half of states on measures of open records laws; whistle blower laws; campaign finance laws; open meetings laws; and conflict of interest laws.  That is the story that quickly emerges in reviewing state standings on the newly released second edition BGA-Alper Integrity Index that gauges the relative strength of state laws on transparency, accountability and limits in government.  The index was created by a non-partisan waste-busting watchdog group -- the Better Government Association -- that has been holding public agencies to account since 1923.

The serial, templatized press releases for the top ranked states indicate that they are to be congratulated for their ranking, even though the best of them only merits a letter grade of "D" on the BGA assessment.  It is not a terrific report card, with many states performing well on one or more measures and sucking channel water on the others.  Here are the rankings in order (with imbedded links to the cookie cutter press releases on each state):

1. New Jersey
2. Rhode Island
3. Hawaii
4. Washington
5. Louisiana
6. Nebraska
7. Texas
8. Arkansas
9. Maryland
10. Colorado
11. Arizona
12. Illinois
13. West Virginia
14. Connecticut
15. Minnesota
16. Florida
17. Wisconsin
18. Kansas
19. California
20. Massachusetts
21. Oklahoma
22. Missouri
23. North Carolina
24. Michigan
25. Pennsylvania
26. Iowa
27. Georgia
28. Kentucky
29. Indiana
30. South Carolina
31. Ohio
32. Oregon
33. Maine
34. North Dakota
35. Nevada
36. New York
37. Utah
38. Virginia
39. Mississippi
40. Alaska
41. New Hampshire
42. New Mexico
43. Delaware
44. Idaho
45. Wyoming
46. Montana
47. Tennessee
48. Alabama
49. Vermont
50. South Dakota

According to the BGA rankings, South Dakota owes its last place finish to earning only a third of the available points -- ranking 49th in open records laws, 46th in both whistle blower and open meetings laws, 34th in campaign finance laws and 27th in conflict of interest laws.  BGA Executive Director Jay Stewart concludes, "If you look at the percentage score, South Dakota received 32%, the equivalent of a F letter grade, hardly a cause for celebration."

In defense of South Dakota particularly, and all states to a certain degree, the BGA index lacks context or more than a single dimension.  Sure it looks at five areas of law but it gives no consideration to how states of performing under those laws.  Clearly, BGA sees South Dakota's open records laws as the second weakest in the land but the state's Open SD portal is apparently much better than the underlying law, providing a single spot on the Internet where South Dakotans can see how their governments are spending money.

If there is to be a third edition of the BGA-Alper Integrity Index, it would be fascinating to see an assessment of how well - or how poorly - states are executing against the underlying laws.

As road trips go, a journey to visit each of the Top 10 states as ranked in the 2008 Digital States survey (conducted every two years by e.Republic's Center for Digital Government) would cover 12,928 miles (if done in order) from coast to coast, with stops in a number of state capitols in between.

In the spirit of those famous 5-day tours of Europe, here is a busboy's recap of an only-time-to-hit-the-highlights trip to the eleven states that earned the distinction of being a Top 10 Digital State. 

The tour begins in the industrial heartland and ends, after crisscrossing the country at least three times, in the emergent new mountain west.

10.    Pennsylvania
(Image: Pennsylvania Portal)

COMPASS brings together these programs in a simple fashion - the customer does not have to have the detailed understanding of federal, state and local policy knowledge and focuses on 3 key steps - Click, Apply, Benefit.    A customer is able to access a wide variety of human service programs online that are spread across 20 different bureaus, agencies and departments. COMPASS began by integrating the various forms of state Medicaid assistance programs offered by DPW and Insurance and integrated healthcare access to individuals, pregnant women, families and children who are in need of healthcare assistance. Through the much publicized "Cover all kids" program, Pennsylvania expanded access for healthcare to all eligible children, and COMPASS is the primary access point for the commonwealth. In addition to health related access, including access to long term care and home and community based services, customers can access benefits for food assistance, school meals, and Women and Infant Children programs online. COMPASS expands access to critical emergency programs such as fuel assistance and general assistance for needy residents.     COMPASS improves customer service by providing electronic features to report any coverage changes, and allowing access to benefit and service information similar to online banking features.

10.    Tennessee
(Image: Tennessee Maps)

Tennessee.gov maps drivers license stations, schools, county clerks, state parks and other public facilities.  Below the covers, the state has consolidated three-quarters of what had been 1,600 widely dispersed servers and more than 200 IT functions into a shared data center.

9.    Maryland
(Image: Maryland DG Promo)

Service Access and Information Link (SAIL), a web-based screening and application tool open to all Maryland residents, provides online tools to determine potential benefit eligibility and examine various social services offerings. SAIL is available publicly and DHR has partnered with many community-based organizations such as the United Way of Maryland to encourage awareness and promote access. In addition to allowing individuals to pre-screen for benefit eligibility and explore information about social services programs.

8.     South Dakota
(Image: South Dakota Open SD)

On information: In addition to more than 180,000 pages of information already available on state government websites, OPEN SD provides financial information about state government, in a searchable format, which currently includes over 106,000 different financial records.

On services: Residents can now apply for UI weekly benefits through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or the Internet and have his/her weekly payment delivered by direct deposit or debit card. The automation also provides the citizens 24x7 access to track their current claims process through online self service. Mailing and printing cost have been eliminated or reduced.  Client trips to the Career Centers have been reduced or eliminated resulting in lower costs for citizens.

7.     Kentucky
(Image: Kentucky Tech Trooper)

Kentucky State Police officer demonstrates a mobile data terminal, scanner and digital driver's license in his cruiser near the State Capitol in Frankfort.  Kentucky is emphasizing wireless delivery of state services as part of its e-Government strategy.


6.    Washington
(Image: Artist rendering of Washington Tech State)

With newly implemented systems in the corrections and personnel departments, and new initiatives in e-health and master business licensing, the Evergreen state has turned its attention to sustainability: 2/3 of agencies use energy conservation software on their PCs and laptops (with $1 million in estimated annual savings); and embraces industry standard sustainability practices for environmentally preferable purchasing and disposal.

5.     California
(Image: California YouTube Channel)

The home state of silicon valley relaunched its portal with new video, blogging and social network entry points while moving mission critical systems that do the heavy lifting of determining eligibility, administering and delivering social services to modern technology architectures.

4.     Arizona
(Image: Arizona @ Your Service)

Building on success of online self service, the Arizona Health Care Containment System has transitioned 20 percent of its workforce (300 people) to full time teleworkers, saving $667,000 each year, cancelled the leases on two office buildings, with employee productivity up by up to 45% and turnover down by 16%.


3.    Virginia
(Image: Virginia CMOC)

Virginia's Centralized Management and Operations Center for information technology at theChesterfield Enterprise Solutions Center, a key element in a ten year $1.9 billion partnership with Northrup Grumman to create a standardized, shared statewide computing utility.  It is expected to save $120 million in the next ten years in energy costs alone.

2.    Michigan
(Image: Michigan Self Service Station)

Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) - In 2007, the Governor's emergency financial advisory panel called for structural transformation of public service delivery. Across every state program the directive was given to eliminate fraud/abuse, streamline operations and get critical services to the citizens needing it most. In just two years, BICC has become core to optimizing outcomes and measuring programs, through successfully integrating BI and performance management. Results include:

• Compared food stamp records for 429,000 kids (4-19) against our student database, automatically qualifying 337,000 for school lunch assistance without filing out a single form;
• Matching health screening records against birth records identified thousands of newborns eligible for but not receiving free screening;
• By comparing day care benefits against wage records, detected over $17 million in fraud/abuse;
• BICC influenced policy when data analysis found that many homeless were eligible for, but not utilizing, program assistance, leading to the statewide homeless initiative, proactively getting assistance to at-risk families before they lost their homes; and,
  
• Cross-referencing children's metabolic screenings against immunization records allowed parent notification, increasing immunizations for high-risk kids.
  

1.    Utah
(Image: Utah Digital Library)

Libraries provide an additional access point to Utah.gov's vast array of online services and information.  In 2008, Governor Jon Huntsman dedicated the new digital library at Utah Valley University.  Also:

• Launched in 2007, Utah GovCast is a comprehensive multimedia portal, providing access to over 27 unique channels and several hundred streaming videos, as well as blogs and online radio;
• Utah teamed with CrimeReports.com to present a more comprehensive view to crime information from over 40 state and local law enforcement agencies;
• Utah Geosights help students develop greater understanding and appreciation of Utah's diverse geology.  Standard Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files, enhanced with imagery and other information, allow citizens to perform virtual flyovers using Google Earth, or simply create map views with tools like Google Maps or Microsoft Live;
• Utah interacts with citizens through a variety of social media including Swivel, where the Utah Data Group presents visual charts of state data; and,
  
• Utah is working to improve the overall efficiency of its data center operations.  In 2007-08, numerous state and local agencies created efficiencies by working with DTS to move their operations into the two primary data centers in Richfield and Salt Lake City.  The connectivity between the two centers is being upgraded to 10Gb in 2008 in a cooperative venture with the Utah Education Network

As part of the state's sustainability program, Governor Jon Huntsman implemented a four day work week for state employees in August 2008.  The move promised to save trips but the Utah plan called for closing governments each Friday.  Closed buildings can go dark and cold, netting energy and cost savings from reduced heating, air conditioning and lighting use.  Significantly, the governor was satisfied that the state portal, Utah.gov, and its suite of more than 600 online transactions were sufficiently broad and deep that the public would be able to conduct business with its government even when the buildings were dark and the employees were at home.

This ability to go green -- or, more precisely, introduce a four day work week in the name of going green -- is a function of having a robust suite of online services.  This table shows, on a percentage basis, the implemtation of major transaction types by state governments over the years.  The first thing to notice is that the majority of transaction or application types have matured out -- that is, all the states that are going to implement a particular online transaction likely have.

The other thing to notice is that those applications with the lowest implementation rates are those that require more sophisticated inputs to complete the transactions - VIN validations, vital records, credential lookups and drivers license renewal among them.  These categories lag the others categories because they are tougher nuts to crack.  The harder work requires rethinking the data sharing needed to complete the transaction.  The data exists somewhere, and the Web 2.0/3.0 challenge and opportunity is to get the data from where they are to where they are needed.  This involves machine-to-machine Web services - the type of Web service that we don't think about because we don't see or touch it.  By definition, it does not involve human intervention or - the way the machines see it - human latency.

The Center's analysis of the data will continue into 2009 with ongoing reports and commentaries.

How Did We Get Here? (Or, About the Digital States Survey)

The Digital State Survey from e.Republic's Center for Digital Government is the nation's original and only continuous assessment of state government's use of information technology (IT) in service to the citizen.  The 2008 survey, conducted with the underwriting support of Verizon Business, included more than 175 questions about citizen self service - including Internet portals, applications and Web 2.0 features such as blogs, wikis, social networks, mashups and viral video.

As importantly, the Digital States survey provides a comprehensive view of state information technology programs as a whole, with measures of the alignment of the architecture, infrastructure, policy, planning, methodologies and organizational maturity of delivering on technology's promise for improved service delivery and operational efficiencies.  The 2008 Digital States survey results also provide a first-in-nation benchmark of state sustainability activities, particularly in the area of the greening of IT.

The most recent Digital States was the most competitive in the survey's decade long history.  The top ranked states include a number of jurisdictions that have consistently made government modernization a priority over time combined with those that have made significant gains more recently. 

The top states reflect the whole country - large and small, red and blue, and geographically diverse.

(This post was prepared with the assistance of Janet Grenslitt of the Center for Digital Government.)
 

Dinner with Kevin Mitnick is at once fascinating and frightening.  In the time that it took the chef to prepare dinner, Mitnick did a little vishing on a major bank's IVR system (with each number pressed on his cell phone appearing in real time on his laptop sceen) after looking up -- through legal online subscription data resellers -- a dinner companion's social security number, drivers license number and mother's maiden name.

Mitnick, an early and infamous hacker who was convcted of computer crimes in 1999, has taken a turn as an information security consultant to government and industry.  We were both in Columbus, Ohio for a Government Technology event.  Interestingly, he is beginning to work magic (or, more properly, illusions) into his speeches and presentations, which takes him back to a childhood curiosity about slight of hand that became a pranksterish era of phreaking (phone freaking), all of which was a precursor to a short but headline-grabbing career as a computer hacker.

He has now gone legit, with a consulting firm and a 2002 book, The Art of Deception, which focuses on the promise, pitfalls and perils of social engineering.


Mitnick, whose metal business card can be broken out into a lock-picking kit, tells a great story but the underlying message is rather basic: Do not use information that is readily available -- SSNs, divers license numbers and mothers' maiden names -- for authentication because it just invites mischief, or worse.  (He differentiates between old school hackers who were motivated by intellectual curiosity and a new underground economy of commercial, malicious hackers who are in it for the money -- yours.)

Granted, information security is the purview of Dan Lohrmann's Securing GovSpace blog but allow me an observation or two: As sophisticated as the attacks and defences have become on this front (and they have), it is telling that the successful exploits remain rather simple, taking advantage of human foibles and poor technical design.