Recently in Internet Category

The nation's first all-digital election was deemed a success by Honolulu's city officials over the weekend. According to the Associated Press:

"Some 115,000 voters in Honolulu's neighborhood council election were able to pick winners entirely online or via telephone. The voting, which started May 6, ended Friday.

City officials say the experiment appears to have generated few problems; it has even saved the financially strapped city around $100,000."

Despite reports that describe the cost savings, ease of use and benefits to overseas and military voters, the same online election process cannot currently be used for city council or state elections in Hawaii because there is no paper record of votes.

The technology infrastructure and web voting process for the election was provided by Everyone Counts, a company that has managed online elections worldwide. The Everyone Counts website had this to say about the Honolulu Internet vote:

"The City and County of Honolulu are currently holding the United States' first all-digital election conducted entirely online and via telephone. Using Everyone Counts' trusted and secure voting solution, the City and County of Honolulu aims to decrease costs and increase voter participation in its 2009 Neighborhood Board Election through Everyone Counts' commitment to universal access. By offering an all-digital voting system, Everyone Counts provides previously disenfranchised voters, such as military and overseas voters, and voters with disabilities, access to a convenient, secure and reliably counted ballot. The voting period for the Neighborhood Board Election opened May 6 and will extend through May 22."       

News video coverage of the vote was also available at KGMB9's website. The video contrasts the new process with more expensive vote by mail methods. The results are expected on Tuesday, May 24.

So is this the wave of the future? There are excellent arguments on both sides of this electronic voting debate. With an exploding amount of identity theft in America, it's hard to see this approach being used for the November 2010 elections across the USA. Nevertheless, this could be a first major step towards online voting.

In my opinion, the goal of increased participation by using the Internet, along with the potential for reduced costs, will drive governments to take a hard look at adopting new technology to make e-Voting a reality over the next few years. What's missing is the new infrastructure to ensure verified identities for all citizens online and the state government infrastructure to eliminate e-voting fraud. More on this in future blogs.

So what are your thoughts? Are we heading for electronic hanging chads? Is this a positive development in your opinion? More important, what new technology infrastructure is your government exploring in this area?    

Growing up, I used to love to watch ABCs Wide World of Sports. I'll never forget that famous line from Jim McKay: "Travelling the world to bring you a constant variety of sports, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition - this has been ABCs Wide World of Sports." The words were always accompanied with pictures of successes like US Olympic hockey heroes as well as tragic failures such as a skier wiping-out while going down a scary mountain.  

In many ways, covering technology infrastructure is no less daunting than covering the global sports scene. I know that readers are inherently tech-savvy with access to an infinite number of channels. From USA Today's "Tech" section to Government Technology Magazine's News headlines to eWEEK.com's IT Infrastructure pages, there is way too much going on to even scratch the surface of what's happening globally.  

On top of that, I have a full-time day job as Michigan's CTO leading hundreds of technology staff and contractors within the Michigan Department of Information Technology's Infrastructure Services Administration. So when it comes to covering technology, I will definitely be picking and choosing where to engage and what to leave for others.

A quick glance at a recent front page from eWEEK.com's IT Infrastructure section illustrates the scope of what we face each day. First, there's a "Top IT Infrastructure Opinion" entitled: "What Will the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 Do to Your Job and Business." The next story, "Tools Measure Outside Air for Data Center Cooling," did not really excite me but was linked very creatively to "Green IT." Nice spin.  

The stories go on and on, from Obama Vows E-Health Records to Vets, to New Microsoft Windows Licensing Aids Desktop Virtualization, Report Says, to  Before Grid Hack Reports, NERC Advises Industry on Cyber Assets.  (Yep, the last one's back to the link between security and critical infrastructure.) I expect that my background will keep drawing me back to that security direction, but I'm going to try to leave that gig to my talented friend Mark Weatherford. Nevertheless, I've warned Mark that, at times, I may not be able to resist the cybersecurity temptation. 

So how will I decide what to write about? Mostly, I hope to cover the items that are hot (or not) at work within Michigan government. From stimulus spending to new views on federal/state/local cooperation, these are fascinating times. At the end of the day, I like to blog about what is intriguing or thought-provoking to me, as my previous security blog-followers know well from Securing GovSpace and Lohrmann on GovSpace.        

Since this is my first "Lohrmann on Infrastructure" blog, I'd like to look a bit closer at the parallels between blogging about sports and technology. Amazing technological advances have allowed the coverage of sports to change dramatically over the past 40+ years. All-sports TV channels like ESPN are widely available, and many popular events like "March Madness" (the Men's NCAA Basketball Championship) are made available for free on the Internet. Despite these advances, we still seek the same things when watching. Beyond following our alma mater, we become engaged as we learn about stories which offer "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" in sports or even other interesting stories covering the rest of life. 

My hope is that this new infrastructure blog can offer at least a small taste of those same elements regarding technology. Granted, the topics are not usually as exciting Kurt Warner's rise to Super Bowl stardom. I realize that I may not achieve this ambitious blogging goal. No doubt, many of the stories we cover in technology can be boring or seem like "just work."  

And yet, we all know that success comes when the people, our work processes and the right technology work together well. For most of us, the technology infrastructure we choose is only a part of our core activity, but our project management, technical architecture, network implementation or governance becomes central. If we can learn from others in the industry, we can be more effective. This includes learning from their successes and failures.   

So just as I am fascinated by the background pieces that are offered on athletes during the Olympics, I enjoy blogging most when I can analyze the deeper story behind the headline technology story. This approach isn't always possible, but it is my goal for Lohrmann on Infrastructure. While each blog can hopefully stand alone and be read as a one-off, I try to tell a wider story over time. To relate technology infrastructure headlines to our specific situations within government offices. Time will tell whether I am even remotely successful at this ambition while at the same time addressing the wide world of IT infrastructure.   

Finally, I'd like this to be a two-way dialogue. I truly hope you participate and offer your insights, ideas and suggestions. What's working at work, what's not and why?