April 2009 Archives
As of 10 AM PT, the numbers are:
| California | 7 cases | |
| Kansas | 2 cases | |
| New York City | 28 cases | |
| Ohio | 1 case | |
| Texas | 2 cases | |
| TOTAL COUNT |
40 cases | |
The CDC has also released some guidelines regarding the use of facemasks and/or respirators to prevent infection.
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/masks.htm?s_cid=tw_epr_76
View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map
Brian Watson, who writes a CIO column for eWeek magazine, came up with an interesting observation last week. (I would give you the link to Watson's column, but eWeek has this maddening habit of not posting online links to articles that appear in their print publication.)
In recent months a number of companies -- some rather large in size, including News Corp, ConocoPhillips, Harrah's -- are dropping the CIO title for positions that involve a corporation's IT operations. Instead, as these and other firms restructure, they are parceling out CIO duties to VPs and deputy CIOs.
Art Langer, a Columbia University professor, told Watson that "the CIO role has less legitmacy than other C-level positions, making it easier to discard in tough economic times." Unlike CEOs and CFOs who have been around for a while in organizations, CIOs "are relatively new to the C-suite and they lack a defined career/educational track -- and a professional organization to bolster their credibility."
Watson is writing about the private sector but there are parallels to the public sector. Most signfiicantly, public CIOs are relatively new to the c-level in government. It's only been in the past few years that we've seen a rise in the number of CIOs who report to the highest elected official in government. And while the position of the federal CIO is mandated by Congress and state CIOs have a strong professional organization (NASCIO), the role of the local government CIO is much more ambiguous.
I have yet to hear of any county or municipal governments dropping the CIO title, but they are under the most pressure to cut costs in the economic downturn and would be the most likely to jettison the position and restructure it into something that isn't called a CIO.
Because there's clear evidence of the problem in the private sector, Watson believes the CIO role is in a crisis. I don't think that's the case in the public sector, but his advice is something any CIO, public or private, should consider in these turbulent times. CIOs need to make sure they are "true" partners with their leaders, thinking strategically, collaborating closely with their executives and business units and "canning the tech-speak."
April has been a cruel month up here in Massachusetts. The weather has been chilly and wet (no surprise) and the Red Sox got their 2009 baseball season off to a horrendous start, losing 6 of their first 8 games.
If that wasn't bad enough, the state found itself facing a $1 billion deficit in the middle of the fiscal year, forcing the governor and state legislature to scramble and find ways to patch the gaping budget hole. So far, the suggestions on how to fix the problem haven't been pretty.
After years of just watching revenue grow, even as new more expensive programs were added to the budget, policymakers find themselves facing three stark choices:
- Raise taxes
- Cut services
- Reduce expenses.
Not wanting to raise taxes and damage their chances for reelection, politicians in Massachusetts have opted for cutting services and reducing expenses. The final item on the list means trying to tackle that runaway train known as benefits, a sacred cow to the powerful government unions here.
Despite howls of protest, the unions and their legislative supportors have seen their arguments against change undercut by a series of articles in the (financially vulnerable) Boston Globe that have exposed just how costly and unsustainable some of the agreements have become between the state and its workers.
But that's not the only problem with government in Massachusetts and elsewhere. There's just too much of it. Too many agencies doing the same job (for example, Massachusetts has three large transportation departments).
The problem extends beyond the Boston bureaucracy. Massachusetts has 351 cities and towns, with way too many trying to maintain their own services when, in fact, they should be sharing.
Tom Brokaw, the former NBC news announcer, recently wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times pointing out how costly it has become to maintain government at the state, county and munipal level, especially in rural areas. As an example he cites the 99 counties that exist in Iowa, each with its own set of courts that continue to operate, whether they are truly needed or not.
But it's not all bad news. The city of Springfield, Mass., went bankrupt several years ago after local officials couldn't make the tough choices to raise taxes, cut services and reduce expenses. So the state appointed an independent financial board to take over and run the city
Today, one of the poorest cities in the Commonwealth (based on per capita income) has a $10 million surplus, despite the worst economy in over 60 years. The board imposed on the city its version of CompStat and put each department under intense performance scrutiny. As a result, the city has slashed a raft of wasteful and unncessary expenses and is saving another $1.7 million annually.
While cuts in staffing have been made, investments in technology are up. Way up. Springfield has implemented an ERP system to streamline financials and HR. And the city is about embark on 311, which will reduce the number of non-emergency calls made to the city's 911 system while improving service response.
Ripples of reform are appearing elsewhere around the country. Will they go far enough? In some regions of the country where the problems are deep, the answer is probably yes. We have the tools, thanks to technology, to share services in a way that wasn't possible 10 years ago. Now it will just take political willpower to make it happen.
The state tallies more than 400,000 square feet of data center floor space, spread across 400 data centers and server rooms.
This week, OCIO also announced policies for enterprise architecture and project management.
I live in the Northeast where travel by passenger rail is an option. In fact, there's an Amtrak stop just a few miles from my home, where I can board intercity trains that can take me to New York City and beyond.
For purposes of business, riding a train is great. I don't have to take off my shoes and have my bags inspected prior to boarding. Once in my seat, I can plug in my laptop computer, turn on my wireless broadband card, take calls on my cell phone and do just about everything I do back in my office. If I'm hungry, I can stroll down to the cafe car and get something to eat and drink. By the time I reach my destination, I'm far more relaxed and have accomplished much more than when I fly.
I also know I can only do this in the Northeast Corridor, where frequent and relatively fast rail service makes traveling by train both reliable and convenient. You can't do the same between, say Chicago and St. Louis, or Atlanta and Nashville or Los Angeles and San Francisco. There's nothing speedy, convenient or reliable when it comes to rail service in these and about a dozen other high capacity corridors of travel.
Fortunately, the situation is about to change. Today, President Obama announced plans to develop high speed rail in the United States. In February, Congress approved spending $8 billion to jump start the kind of intercity rail service that can be found throughout much of Europe, Japan and, eventually, China. Obama has included another $5 billion for high speed rail in the White House budget.
In his remarks, Obama spoke about the nearly $80 billion in lost productivity that happens annually in the U.S., thanks to congestion on the roads and at airports. High speed rail won't eliminate all the congestion; the country is too big and would require a train network too large to reach every corner and provide everyone service that's convenient, fast and reliable.
But by focusing on a dozen or so potential corridors between 100 and 500 miles in length, high speed rail can make a difference by becoming an option in terms of travel. We have the proof from highly successful rail systems built in the same manner overseas and within the northeast corridor, between Boston and Washington, D.C.
So what's this have to do with technology? Plenty. High speed rail is one component of smart transit, America's new infrastructure. Just as we're learning that IT can help create smart grids that make our use of energy more efficient, so too can IT help make surface transport more efficient, reliable and convenient.
Bits and pieces of smart transit have been popping up in recent years. Mapping tools help car drivers find their destination more easily; they help fleets of trucks and buses move more efficiently and, with the development of a high speed rail system, IT will aid in speeding up the movement of trains and give passengers up to the minute information for making connections between the trains and airports, buses and subways.
It's all about new, smart infrastructure that allows people to have more options for traveling easily without paying the high cost of lost productivity and environmental damage.
All aboad!
Check out this v-log in which Government Technology Features Editor Andy Opsahl pokes a little fun at GIS technicians while highlighting a nifty GIS tool that tracks foreclosures for local governments.