Recently in Politics Category

A coming soon banner obscures most of a new sign that greets drivers entering the seven story parking structure at Seattle Tacoma (SeaTac) International Airport but it is still enough to make an internal combustion engine stutter.  Accompanied by a stylized graphic of a car, electric cable and lightning bolt, the sign announces that electric car charging stations are being installed on Level 5.

The move comes as MINI has just begun electric car trials in select markets on the east coast and California and two years before Chevy is slated to roll out the Volt, the plug-in hybrid on which GM appears to betting the company.

The executives of GM and the other Detroit-based auto makers are due back in Washington, DC for a second shot at extracting at least $25 billion in bridge loans from Congress by presenting more detailed plans for how they will use the money.  It seems that, in the "other Washington," other public officials are presuming on the what those plans contain.

"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.

A bipartisan and independent California state agency is recommending further consolidation of the state's information technology infrastructure, assets and staff under the state CIO.  The Little Hoover Commission, in an ironically-named report called  A New Legacy System: Using Technology to Drive Performance, recommends:

Empower the state chief information officer with tools and resources to oversee a generational transformation of information technology in state government. The state must consolidate resources under the Office of the State Chief Information Officer, including the Department of Technology Services, the Office of Systems Integration, geospatial information functions and the information security functions of the Office of Information Security and Privacy Protection.

Use public money for technology projects responsibly and with transparency.
To rebuild the confidence of the Legislature and the public, the process through which California's technology projects are governed must be open and transparent. The Information Technology Council should expand to include legislative members as well as members from existing technology councils, and it should be empowered to prioritize overall technology projects for the state and aggressively monitor their implementation. The state chief information officer should regularly report on the progress of the state's information technology projects through a more robust Web site.

Use technology to track, measure and improve performance.
The state should encourage and foster the burgeoning development of performance measurement projects throughout state departments and agencies by re-establishing the technology innovation fund and creating opportunities to regularly integrate performance data into the state's management and budgeting strategy. The governor should hold regular public meetings with agency heads to evaluate performance data.

Even while tacitly recognizing that these changes will be difficult and take time, the Commission points to a new model for IT governance as key to a more effective fiscal management in the long run.

In the name of full disclosure, I was one of many who provided testimony to the Commission and worked with its staff in the preparation of the report.  To read the full text of the report, download it here -- LittleHoover.pdf .

There is a conventional wisdom among public employees: vote your job.  That usually means voting for the incumbent whose administration signs your paycheck rather than the challenger who ran on a platform of eliminating government waste, which could include your job.

It is a different story around the cabinet table, where the members are supposed to be the first choice of the appointing authority.  When the appointing authority changes, and when there is a change in party, resignation seems obvious.

There is sometimes a case to be made for retention over a political transition.  The speculation about the possibility that Defense Secretary Bob Gates would be held over by the incoming Obama administration is a case in point.

Sometimes continuity matters, sometimes there is a non partisan path forward, sometimes the plan is working, and sometimes the incumbent is uniquely credible in the community of interest such that spanning changes in appointing authority and even party make sense.

With eight of the eleven gubertorial elections on Tuesday night returning incumbents for another term, the issue of transitions may not seem relevant.  But returning governors often see the new term as exactly that - new.

Re-election forces soul searching and a hard look of what worked and what didn't. What remains undone and will the current strategies and players get them to done? In such circumstances, legacy becomes more important than continuity.  

It takes little intuition to figure out whether you are part of the next administration when the call comes thanking you for your service, couched in some awkward talk about going in a new direction.  

But what if doing the right thing for the good of the order comes down to your own initiative?  It may be helpful to see yourself as others do.

• When the track record of projects has been obfuscated to mask overruns in cost, time and scope, or bug lists are kept from partner agencies to save face, it is time to write that letter.
• When you have earned a reputation as a hatchet person, because the person who dismantles a program is rarely the right person to build a new one, it is time to write that letter.
• When you do not have a good and clearly stated answer to the simple question, what's next?, it is time to write that letter.
• If you have never been caught making a decision, it is time to write that letter.
• If you have a customer base of only one -- the appointing authority -- it is time to write that letter.  (Conversely, if you covertly complain about the appointing authority to curry favor with customer agencies, it is time to write that letter.)
• If you spent the good old days marginalizing people whose help you could now use to work through the hard times, it is time to write that letter.
  

An old friend taught me a long time ago that success in this business is based on competence and trust.  If that is not the way you are seen up, down and across the organization, it is time to write that letter.

Do it.  Now.

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."

"The polls are tightening," was the almost universal caveat repeated by cable news talking heads in the final countdown to the only poll that matters -- today's general election.  It is an open question whether "tightening" could be used as a synonym or euphemism for skewing.

Others have written widely about the so-called Bradley Effect, which as described by TIME magazine, is a "theory holds that voters have a tendency to withhold their leanings from pollsters when they plan to vote for a white candidate instead of a black one."  In March, a Pew Research study purported to identify the presence of both a Bradley Effect and a Reverse Bradley effect, the latter of which would advantage an African-American candidate.  

An editorial in this morning's Los Angeles Times is skeptical about the Bradley Effect's existence, and even it does, whether it will have a role in Obama's fortunes.  In dismissing it as a myth, the LA Times observes that demography and technology may be part of the effect's undoing:

[T]his election may feature a jump in the number of younger voters who cast ballots. They appear to tilt heavily toward Obama and are more likely to rely on cellphones, which pollsters have yet to figure out how to contact. Thus any racists who conceal themselves from pollsters may be counterbalanced by voters who are simply unavailable to them.

The dead space between public opinion pollsters and cell phone users -- particularly the one in three American households that have cell phones to the exclusion of land lines (according to a recent CDC-commissioned survey) -- could be the source of surprises of its own.

Consider the possibility of a reverse Dewey effect. Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York is best remembered from a headline that became a punchline -- DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.

There are a number of explanations for the mistaken headline.  A printer's strike at The Chicago Tribune forced the paper to go to press an hour earlier than usual, before the actual ballot count was available.

The Tribune had been dismissive of Dewey but new fangled public opinion polling had helped convince its editors that Dewey had a significant advantage heading into election day.  The telephone was at the heart of the new fangeld polling methods. But pollsters were only able to reach people who could actually afford telephones, who were overwhelmingly Republicans, and who overwhelmingly favored Dewey.

Fast forward to today and the ubiquity of cell phones whose users are out of reach of pollsters.  Given what we know -- or what we think we know -- about the socio economic profile of cell phone users and young voters, we could see a Reverse Dewey Effect in tonight's results.

The suddenly conservative pundits who say the polls are tightening could be right.  But if they are wrong, and the margins are wider than expected, the credit (or the blame) could belong a Reverse Dewey Effect and those pesky cell phones.  To echo the LA TImes on that 'other' effect, it is not "so much that respondents lie to pollsters as that pollsters can't know what they don't know to look for."

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.

The next president's choice of, and mandate for, a federal CIO has been speculative fodder for publications as diverse as BusinessWeek and The Atlantic on one side and c|net, CIO, Information/Network/Computer -Weeks and our sister magazines (Government Technology and Public CIO) on the other.  Much of the coverage is aspirational -- projecting what the IT industry and other interested third parties (including the editors of the magazines) would like to see.

These speculative pieces look forward to election day or, more properly, inauguration day, and what could be.  With much less fanfare, and just 15 days before the election, the outgoing administration issued a memo that defines what is now.

The memo, heavily laden with the kind of language that assigns responsibility retroactively while simultaneously dulling the senses, lays out fourteen characterstics of a federal CIO.  (It is worth noting that the memo codifies a federated model where there are many federal CIOs, each working independently on behaf of their respective agencies.)  Here is the job as understood in the dying days of an outgoing administration, in its own words:

I. Organizational Structure and Reporting Relationships of IT Executives and Senior Managers

A. The Department or Agency has a designated executive-level Chief Information Officer (CIO) reporting to the head of the organization, with formal and full responsibility for all requirements set forth in promulgating statutes, regulations and guidance of Public Law 104-106, "Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996," Public Law 107-347, "E-Government Act of 2002," Title 44 U.S. Code Section 3506 "Federal Agency Responsibilities," Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 39, "Acquisition of Information Technology," and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, "Transmittal Memorandum #4, Management of Federal Information Resources."
B. The Agency CIO has ultimate responsibility for the governance, management and delivery of IT mission and business programs within the Department, and has an effective operative means of meeting this responsibility.
C. The CIO may review the qualifications of and provides input into the selection process for IT and IT-related executive and senior management positions within the Agency and organizational components thereof.
D. IT executives and senior managers in all organizational components of the Agency have clear responsibilities and accountability for adhering to Agency IT policy and direction established by the CIO.
E. The CIO may establish and provide evaluations and appraisals in collaboration with the appropriate supervisors of record for at least one critical performance element within the performance plans of IT and IT-related executives and senior managers within the Agency and organizational components thereof.

II. Authorities to Set IT Policy and Implementing Procedures
Except where otherwise authorized by law, regulation, or other policy, the CIO has the authority to set Agency-wide IT policy, including all areas of IT governance such as enterprise architecture and standards, IT capital planning and investment management, IT asset management, IT budgeting and acquisition, IT performance management, risk management, IT workforce management, IT security and operations, and information security.

III. Authorities to Select, Plan, Control and Evaluate Investments in and Acquisition of Information Systems and Information Technology
Except where otherwise authorized by law, regulation, or other policy, the Agency head is responsible for the following activities. The Agency CIO shall be the lead agency official in taking the necessary actions to ensure such activities are completed. Thus, the Agency head:

A. Is responsible for ensuring all Agency business and mission policies, processes, and IT and IT-related programs comply with the Federal Enterprise Architecture;
B. Ensures the organization's enterprise architecture data is visible and accessible to other federal agencies and mission partners to the extent necessary for other organizations to leverage those resources, and works collaboratively with other agencies and organizations on enterprise architecture issues and opportunities;
C. Ensures IT and IT-related systems, assets and services acquired and existing within the organization do not unnecessarily duplicate those available from other federal agencies, and are planned for and managed throughout their lifecycle;
D. Shall include the Agency CIO in budget formulation, preparation, prioritization and presentation activities, including determining and evaluating IT resource requirements in support of mission execution and program administration and support;
E. Shall include the Agency CIO in Agency and component budget execution and resource allocation and planning activities for IT and systems development, operations, and services as appropriate to ensure resources are expended in accordance with established IT policy;
F. Shall include the Agency CIO in the selection, planning, review, and oversight of major IT and IT-related investments and acquisitions, development projects, and contracts or agreements for goods or services, and in evaluating and providing approval to proceed at the earliest state possible prior to initiating procurements or advancing to subsequent phases of system development and/or acquisition;
G. Reviews the status and progress of projects and activities in the Agency IT investment portfolio to determinate whether to continue, suspend, re-baseline or cancel projects or components thereof, including any associated current or planned acquisitions; and
H. Has established means for ensuring investment management, risk management, information security, and systems development lifecycle management policy compliance, including periodic review of artifacts and development products for IT investments and activities developed within or for component organizations.

A fair reading of this 14-point job description suggests that the memo is a one-size fits all straight jacket.  It would have to be undone by any incoming administration that had a different view of how to manage or lead government modernization efforts.  It would telegraph a message to anyone considering a role as one of many federal CIOs about the skills and world view that are valued -- and those that are not.  And, sadly, it places a straight jacket on incumbent federal CIOs who are instructed to "review the attached IT governance framework [the 14 points above] and summarize your agency's current alignment with each element of the framework via signed memorandum by December 1, 2008."

Sign here.  Take one for the team.  And good luck with the transition.

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.)
 

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.