Paul W. Taylor: September 2008 Archives

The Center for Digital Government released the rankings from the 2008 Digital States survey on the eve of this week's NASCIO conference in Milwaukee.  The 2008 survey, administered biennially to assess government modernization efforts nationwide, introduced a benchmark on the greening of IT as part of state governments' sustainability programs.  Only half of responding states reported that the state green IT efforts are aligned with the executive's larger climate-related initiatives -- an indicator that we are witness to a work in progress but, at least, there is a degree of candor on how far they've come.

Less surprising is the claim by 98 percent of states have or are pursuing data center and server consolidation and virtualization, in that way stretching a green veneer over things that they have long wanted to do.

Some 41 percent of responding states say they have established metrics and installed instruments to measure energy efficiencies, a necessary but non-trivial task if they are ever going to be able to claim progress toward the green goals set by state executives, directed by state legislators and expected by state residents.

Still with the Digital States survey, 80 percent of states report that their PC, Laptop and server refresh policies reflect energy efficiency best practices, which is what you would expect from a public sector IT community that puts a premium on industry best practices.  Scatch the surface, and the use of named best practices drops significantly.  Only 15 percent of respondents reported using The Green Grid in optimizing their data centers and other enterprise computing environments.   The numbers are more encouraging at the server and PC level where two-thirds (66%) of responding states say they have used the model practices developed by the Climate Savers Smart Computing Initiative.

It was interesting then to have Bill Weihl, Google's Green Energy Czar, and someone who was present at the creation of Climate Savers, on a panel at NASCIO (see Green is the New Green post below).  He found the level of state government adoption encouraging even while describing the ongoing efforts to figure out how to measure complex things that have never been measured before -- including but not limited to a carbon footprint (which has seized the imagination of political speechwriters but the metrics of which remain elusive).

Weihl, joined by Michigan CIO Ken Theis and Peggy Ward from the Commonwealth of Virginia, provided color commentary on some live audience polling of state CIOs, their deputies and (in some cases) vendors.

When asked whether green-related emerging best practices such as Climate Savers and The Green Grid were sufficiently well known and mature such that they could be relied upon in policy making, operations and measuring performance, a quarter of state attendees (24%) choose "absolutely not," almost two thirds (61%) straddled the fence with a tentative "maybe," and a supremely confident 15 percent chose "absolutely."  The larger audience was asked to assess the current state of the many IT goods and services marketed as green.  Again, a supremely confident 13 percent described them as transformational and mission critical out of the box.  Others were more circumspect, 28 percent thought today's green-labelled technologies added meaningful value now while another 39 percent thought they were merely transitional -- that is, they would be great once they get the kinks worked out.  For his part, Weihl took comfort in that only a fifth of the room (20%) thought the current offerings were just 'green washed' or window dressing.

Theis described Michigan's experience as one of the initial six states to sign on to Climate Savers, describing it as a jumping off point for the larger set of initiatives set out by the governor (to protect the environment while restructing a state inextricably linked to the automobile industry in an era of $4-per-gallon gasoline) while helping to bring some discipline to what and how things got done.  (Theis also teased a rumored high level appointment of an Muppet to the position of state energy officer who had intimate knowledge of being green, and that it wasn't easy.)

Ward, who serves as Virginia's CISO and internal auditor within the Commonwealth's technology agency (VITA), spoke to that state's experience with telework, the direction for which was codified in legislation with specific date-certain targets.  The governor has amplified those goals for executive branch agencies with a view to normalizing telework, rather than it being treated as an exception or alternative.

We returned to the audience for their views of telework, which 60 percent of attendees thought would (finally) get traction thanks to the political energy around sustainability.  (One audience member questioned our assumption that telework was consistent with sustainability because it just shifted energy consumption from the office to home.  The assertion went unchallenged.  After the session, Dr. Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) said the question has been asked and answered in favor of telework -- due in large measure to reducing trips.  Atkinson also told me about three recent studies that showed that one dollar in IT investments saves $7 in energy.  Check back for a follow on post with the citations.)

Finally, in the mother of all white board exercises, the auditorium was turned into a big conference room with the familiar bureacratic task of identifying the potential benefits and barriers to widespread telework.  The results are presented here in rank order:

Benefits

• Increased employee productivity (38%)
  
• Reduced fuel consumption (31%)
  
• Reduced real estate cost (12%)       
• Less traffic congestion (10%) 
• The Comforts of Home (8%)

Barriers

• Perception  - If I can't see them they aren't working (67%)
  
• Increased  information security concerns (43%)
• Training managers to understand the advantages (29%)
• Added strain to the IT infrastructure as employees log on from home (20%)
  
• Employee reluctance (Need social interaction) (11%)
  
• Equipment costs (11%)
  

That almost a third of the audience (29%) thought managers needed to be trained about the advantages of telework (read: help them let go of old practices) was a catalyst for a discussion of what kind a cultural problem governments were dealing with.  It was the consensus view of the panel that management -- not union or other employee groups -- posed the most significant cultural barrier.  The consensus was not challenged by anyone in the audience -- a plurality of which, earlier in the day, had anonymously identified itself as leaning conservative.

Of course, audience response sessions are only snap shots and, like all straw polls, are unscientific.  But there are clues here as to what we might see as state government takes on a green hue.

In the years after Alexander Graham Bell successfully transmitted the sentence "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" using a liquid transmitter and an electromagnetic receiver on March 10, 1876, enterprising reporters and editors most likely ran breathless stories about how government was using the new fangled telephones -- sparking debates about whether this was a cause for great celebration or concern.  The slower the news day, the higher the likelihood.

Fast forward 132 years and the story has not changed that much.  Government is still discovering the Internet and it is still drawing praise and criticism in its attempts.  Portals are (largely) yesterday's news but ink is still being spilled to chronicle public sector experimentation with social networking sites, blogs and wikis.  Around here, such things are our main beat and we are forever forwarding links to interesting finds and examples of how the popular press covers them like this one in the Washington Post on text messaging in local government (forwarded by our Editor-in-Chief).

It is an unenviable task to follow or advance a big city daily newspaper's coverage of anything but here we can add something the original story lacked -- context.  Our ongoing review of the results of the Digital States suggests that there is a critical mass around the use of Web 2.0 technologies.

In summary form, even as work continues to finish what states started in their transition to online service delivery, there has been widescale experimentation and significant adoption of collaborative Web 2.0 technologies among public agencies.  Listservs, the long established Web 1.0 tool used by more than two-thirds of states (60%) of states, have been joined by wikis in a quarter (26%) for sharing information of common interest and concern.  RSS Feeds - alternatively known as Really Simple Syndication, RDF Site Summary, or Rich Site Summary - are common (90%) for broadcasting information to interested users, and almost three-quarters of states (72%) are using podcasts somewhere within the executive branch.  Just less than half of states are using Text Messaging (49%), mashups (46%) and blogs (44%).

The numbers suggest that some public agencies in some jurisdictions are finding ways to act more like the citizens they serve, using technologies that their publics use in their everyday lives.

"I can't believe someone could be texting while driving a train." That was the conclusion of Denise Tyrell, a spokesperson for Metrolink, on reports that train engineer Robert Sanchez might have been texting with teenage train enthusiasts immediately before the crash.

So far, the National Transportation Safety Board has not recovered his phone and has requested copies of the phone records of both the engineers and his fans. But a CBS affiliate talked with the teenagers and looked at the messages sent and received just minutes before the crash.



Metrolink, the public agency that operates commuter train service on five regional lines (Ventura County, Antelope Valley, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange County) in Southern California, has suspended all use of text messaging after the deadly crash of Train 111 last Friday.

The crash is the worst US rail tragedy in a decade and a half, killing 25 and injuring another 125.  In a move originally intended to rebuild public trust, Tyrell got out in front of investigators: "A Metrolink spokeswoman said a day after the accident that the engineer was at fault because he failed to stop at a red light, but NTSB and railroad union officials said it was premature to draw such a conclusion." [See full story here]

As the LA Times reported, Tyrell was later forced to resign over her comments, which were alternatively hailed for their candor by advocates of government transparency and deemed innappropriate for their timing and apparent intent to preempt official investigations. 

The NTSB investigation is ongoing, as is seperate probe by the California Public Utilities Commission (which regulates train safety in the state) but, already, the engineer has been thrown under the train, followed by the spokesperson who threw him and a little technology called text messaging.  You can already feel the chill.

September 11, 2001.  The date by itself invokes a touch point in recent history, marking a modern American tragedy.

In the intervening seven years, many have done much to recover, rebuild and make things better. Others have debated the constitutional and public policy impacts of government decisions in what was euphemistically called the "new normal" of the post-9/11 environment. 

On a previous anniversary in 2004, I offered a "mulligan for the homeland" in the pages of Government Technology about what we had gained and what we had lost in the name of homeland security. Eighteen months later, in defense of the open government movement, I was still thinking about the new normal: "After 9/11, we were told that as an open society our strength was our weakness. Five years on, it's time to re-exert the modest proposition that our strength is still our strength."  This observation too originated in GT but was subsequently chosen for inclusion in a First Amendment desk calendar by the Freedom Forum.

I thought that I had said my piece about this sad American anniversary when I happened across a newly written description of a network initiative in New York state, which "is working toward a goal of developing and implementing an ... emergency radio network to provide a common communications platform for state and local public safety ... agencies.  The inability of first responders to readily communicate with one another ... can result in loss of lives and property."

I had to check the date, especially given the grammatical tense - "is working" and "can result"?!  The language use may have suited September 10, 2001, but we are a long way past then. 

The results of two audits put the situation in starker terms:

The first audit found numerous operational deficiencies and other problems that led to extensive delays and continued testing failures. The second audit found that [one county alone] could spend nearly $30 million less by scaling back its participation in SWN and building its own radio network.

"New York is not much closer to a statewide network today than it was when this whole process started," [State Comptroller Thomas] DiNapoli said. "After three rounds of failed testing, it is apparent that this system is not ready to move forward. [The contractor] has not met its contractual obligations, and New York can't afford to spend $2 billion on a system that doesn't work right. It's time to fish or cut bait.

Seven years later, first responders -- universally regarded as heroes from that dark day -- are still waiting to have their say in life and death situations.  More's the pity.  More's the shame.

 

In accepting his party's nomination for president, Senator John McCain basked in the reflected glory of a long and distinguished career in public service and the runaway buzz around his pick for vice president. 

His acceptance speech included a single reference to technology - significantly, it was in the context of a confession of things that the federal government had failed to do well, or at all.  He delivered the line at 10:56PM Eastern:

We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington.

A fair reading suggests that catching up with history requires public policy focus and public investment in infrastructure.  Reconcile that with promises to reduce taxes and cut government spending.  It is not just a math problem.