Dave Fletcher's Government and Technology Weblog, v. 2.0

Utah.gov 2012: Built on Data

2012-05-01T07:45:00.000-06:00

Today, we introduce a major change to the state of Utah portal, Utah.gov. Going forward, the portal has a new underlying infrastructure that will drive the delivery of data and information. In reality, Utah.gov is built on data and a new Master Data Index helps to ensure that the portal integrates information and services in real time. The MDI indexes all kinds of data, including online services, social media streams, raw datasets, agencies, locations, and mobile applications. For example, Utah.gov indexes over 850 Twitter feeds, aggregating and integrating streams on topics like tourism, business, and education.

Utah.gov 2012 is built using a parallax scrolling technique to create a more immersive, three dimensional experience using layers that scroll at different speeds. The Utah.gov development team ultimately focuses on delivering a high quality user experience. We continue to learn from our users' activity and a primary goal has always been to increase the total number of unique visitors to the site. This ensures that our services and information are being seen and utilized by the largest number of Utah businesses and citizens possible. Since 2007, this number has increased by an average of over half a million unique visitors every month. This does not even consider the many successful non-Utah.gov domains also supported by Utah government agencies, such as the highly visual travel portal VisitUtah.com or our innovation portal InnovationUtah.com.

Utah state and local agencies have taken advantage of social media to a remarkable degree. With some many options for connecting to government, it is easy to get distracted and it is somewhat remarkable that so many citizens continue to find their way to the Utah.gov portal. They can find much of the information they are looking for in places like Facebook and Scribd. Even the newer social media services like Google+ and Pinterest are becoming a second or third home to Utah.gov agencies and services. For example, check out the beautiful pinboards of the Utah Travel Council.

One of the best ways to access Utah.gov data is using mobile platforms such as Flipboard and connecting to Utah.gov Twitter lists. Simply subscribe to @UtahGov Twitter lists for government or education, then pull them up on Flipboard to get the latest information delivered to your iOS device.

We are exploring new ways to engage Utah's tech community and have created a new Utah.gov API page that developers can use to leverage Utah.gov MDI data to create their own services.

Utah.gov continues to work to support its growing base of mobile users. Utah agencies have created about 40 mobile apps designed to meet the needs of these users. The site itself uses responsive design to support various formats of smartphones and other smaller devices.

If you have suggestions for helping improve Utah.gov, we want to hear them. We receive hundreds of comments each year that have helped us improve the way we offer services and provide information.

More on the Internet of Things and Government

2012-04-05T14:30:00.000-06:00

You may not know this, but April 9th is Global Internet of Things Day.

In yesterday's Government Technology article, "The Internet of Things Comes to Government", 56% of senior level survey responders said that they had no Internet of Things projects underway or didn't know of any. In reality, government is full of internet of things projects and has been for some time. Probably the most significant work is happening in transportation and natural resources, but it doesn't begin or stop there. Here are a few areas:

Transit - Real-time data from government-supported transit systems is everywhere. Fortunately, most of these systems are making this data available through live APIs. We're already seeing apps pop up in the Android and iOS app markets following UTA's announcement making their APi public for real-time bus tracking. An FAQ for this resource is available to developers. There's even one to support SIRI requests.
Intelligent Transportation Systems - UDOT's traffic app for iOS gives you an idea about how connected transportation systems are and why UDOT supports an extensive fiber network. From your phone you get real-time access to an extensive network of cameras and sensor data that monitors Utah's highways 24x7. Utah reports on its lessons learned with ITS through the USDOT.
Streamflow Monitoring - The Utah Water Science Center (USGS) monitors real-time stream flows, water quality, and also supports the Utah Active Water Level Network, which carefully tracks the levels of Utah's critical groundwater resources. You can get a nationwide view at http://groundwaterwatch.usgs.gov.
Weather Information - Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS) have been around for a while, but are getting increasingly sophisticated and pervasive, finding new ways to present and integrate the data with other systems.

These are only the beginning, but the Internet of Things has huge potential for public health, agriculture, public safety, environmental quality, and just about everything else that government does.

I met with a group of Utah CTOs last week and the conversation was dominated by Internet of Things topics. We discussed new trends in sensor interfaces and integration, technologies like Netduino and Arduino that are bringing computing to new areas that can all be connected and interfaced with. The ability to connect with the real world through technologies like Kinect offers additional potential for digital government in the future.

United Nations E-Government Survey 2012

2012-03-06T15:36:00.001-07:00

I downloaded the 2012 UEN eGovernment Report to iBooks while in the elevator on the way out to get a spicy chicken sandwich at Carl's Jr. Great report this year. More comprehensive than any previous report I have seen on international egovernment. According to the report, the top five world e-government leaders are:

1. Republic of Korea
2. Netherlands
3. United Kingdom
4. Denmark
5. United States

According to the UN assessment, the US continues to drop. Scandinavian countries continue to perform well, along with other European countries like Estonia, Germany, and even Liechtenstein. Singapore also dropped down to 10th on the list. That said, there is some great innovation happening in countries that are pretty far down the list, like Brazil and Peru.

Kazakhstan was #1 in Central Asia and #38 overall, jumping 8 spots. I agree that they've been doing some interesting things there.

Spain dropped from #9 in 2010 to #23 in 2012. That's somewhat disappointing from my perspective, because they are a country that I watch very closely and one which has been doing some very creative things particularly at the local and provincial level.

Three countries were at the top of the online service index, perhaps the part I care most about, Korea, Singapore, and the US all received perfect scores. I certainly wouldn't give anyone a perfect score for online services because certainly improvement can continue to be made.

Take a look at the entire report. It's one I'll be keeping on the iPad.

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan048065.pdf

Setting the Agenda for 2012 and Beyond

2012-01-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'm looking at the Federal agenda for 2012 as set out a few weeks ago by Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel. This is what I see:

Cloud
Mobility
Modular Development
Cyber Security

Nothing wrong with this, but it seems to me that for 2012 from a strategic perspective this is looking backward a little. The federal strategy for cloud was layed out by Vivek Kundra and it was a good one and is moving forward. Mobility is here, it is a fact. We should already be where it is we're trying to get to. It is driven by the private economy and we are consumed by it. We should be delivering services to it and we are so it is a matter really of continuing along a path that is already established. NASA, for example, has some wonderful iOS and Android apps as well as EPA, TSA, and many others. Continue to push mobile, that is good, but it is already a well established path prior to 2012. I'm not sure exactly what all is envisioned with the modular development concept based on this information, but it too seems like a preexisting thing. And cyber security, now that has been water that we all must drink and it's not about to disappear any time soon. Applying it to the cloud environments we are moving to is something that must be adopted to and incorporated ASAP as well as a new approach that is focused on a better understanding of threats and vulnerabilities.

The 2012 strategic agenda that I am looking at is more like this:

The Internet of Things
Semantic Web
Artificial Intelligence
The Social Web, eDemocracy, and the Explosion of Knowledge

I know that these concepts have been around for a while as well, but beginning in 2012, we have ways to leverage them as never before to dramatically impact government. I'd love to hear your ideas.

Best of Digital Government in Utah 2011

2011-12-27T09:35:00.002-07:00

It's time to move on to 2012 and it's now been ten years since I started posting the best of digital government in Utah. I started this blog on Radio Userland in 2002 and moved it to Blogger in 2005. Every year, I've done an annual review of our digital progress in Utah State government. Here's some of the best of 2011.

The new Utah.gov. In June, we introduced a completely new look to Utah.gov. Although it was much more focused on search, the new portal also introduced a single page design that included new infographics, integration of social media, and an enhanced news format, along with new geolocation and contextual services. After being ranked #1 among state portals by the Center for Digital Government in 2007 and 2009, this version of the portal came in second among the fifty states. It also received a Gold Award in the W3 web awards and a Best of Class for government in the IMA International awards. 2011 was also brought new levels of involvement to the Utah.gov domain with at least 1.2 million unique visitors to the site every month of the year.
Online Redistricting. The Legislature took its redistricting efforts online this year in an effort to make the process more open and get more public participation. Although the process received some criticism for the way the final decision was made, this was a major step forward as citizens were able to draw up their own map proposals online and share them with those involved directly with the process.
Connect Plus. The new Connect portal was created specifically with tablet users online as a way to give them access to the growing body of social media content and news updates produced by Utah government. The site was created with HTML5.
Accident Reports Online. This great new service gives citizens access to current accident reports from the Highway Patrol and the Utah Department of Public Safety and will be expanded to include reports from local law enforcement agencies.
Google Apps for Government. Utah signed a contract with Google in 2011 to move applications and email into Google's collaborative cloud environment, freeing up resources that were supporting some of these services to do other creative things.
UtahPublicEducation.org. Utah's State Office of Education moved into social media in a big way, not just by creating this constantly updated blog, but also adding Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook services to significantly add to education outreach in the state.
UDOT's new mobile app. Overall, growth in mobile services loomed large in 2011 with many services being added to the mobile portfolio as the use of smartphones in the state continued to explode. UDOT's new mobile app was one of the best and is available for both iOS and Android.
MyCHIE. Utah continues to be a leader in supporting the delivery of electronic health record exchange and services, while supporting citizens' rights to exercise greater control over those records.
New Statewide Warrants Search. Another popular service from the Utah Department of Public Safety, this service lets user search the database of over 100,000 warrants.
uGATE. UDOT creates a new agency data portal with lots of data in reusable formats, including KML for geodata. Nice addition to data.utah.gov services.

Also see: Best of Digital Government / IT for Utah 2010

Connecting the Data Dots

2011-11-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

In our latest Utah Architecture Review Board meeting, we recommended moving ahead with a couple of related initiatives.

Add Data as a Service as a key element of Utah CloudPlan 2.0, the next iteration of our statewide cloud computing strategy.
Initiate a new process for identifying and cataloguing Enterprise Reference Data.

These two concepts are closely connected. They also help support the future of Data.Utah.gov, the state data portal that we put into place 2 1/2 years ago.

Establishing the reference source of enterprise data will enable a more agile and flexible information system development ecosystem which can respond to the needs of state and local government agencies as well as an increasingly integrated citizenry and business community, particularly if this is made available as a cloud-based service.

One of the largest tasks will be the completion of the enterprise reference data catalogue. Within a state enterprise, there is often a lot of data that is duplicated among agencies and no single source may be identified as the source of truth. Establishing that, and making sure that all reference data has a mechanism to ensure that it is current will be an important part of the process. This pool of data resources, combined with the standardized services and automated discovery capabilities will enable much more rapid development of agency applications and services in the future as well as even more opportunity for cross-boundary / enterprise integration.

Another Great Mobile App

2011-10-21T16:17:00.002-06:00

A couple of years ago, the Utah Department of Transportation created a new program called TravelWise as a way to get people to think about their commute and travel habits. The program even set up incentives to encourage carpooling, the use of public transportation, bicycling, etc. Businesses were encouraged to set up teams that could work together to track ways that they were saving miles and reducing energy demand, as well as helping clean up the air. Many businesses signed up. Now, we have a new TravelWise mobile application that lets you enter your saved miles and trips from your smartphone. This is a great way to track how you are contributing to the program.

These kind of apps often spawn more innovative thinking, so expect to see more mobile apps in the future. You can find more great mobile apps and services at Connect.Utah.gov.

Working Toward CloudPlan 2.0

2011-10-18T18:22:00.003-06:00

It's been two years now since we created Utah's first cloud computing strategy so we are now working on version #2. Several factors come into play as we create the new plan.

Mobile technologies have improved substantially in just the past two years and many of our agency customers now use mobile devices for a growing variety of purposes. The need for cloud-based mobile productivity tools is greater than ever before.
Collaboration has exploded. In 2009, we had just introduced connect.utah.gov as a way to aggregate our social media content which consisted primarily of about 100 Twitter feeds, a few Facebook pages, and a number of blogs. The amount of dynamic content has exploded in two years and is continuing on a regular upward trend. Now, instead of just aggregating the content, we integrate it throughout Utah.gov. Cloud-based collaboration and social media tools have become an integral part of many employees daily regimen.
We completed the consolidation of our data centers and implemented virtualization on a broad scale. Servers and platforms are now provisioned in close to real time. Expectations are elevated. Long software development cycles are generally unacceptable.

We recently completed an RFP for hosted email with associated productivity tools. Once a contract is in place, the state will begin a process of converting to GMail accompanied with an enterprise implementation of Google Apps. These productivity tools will bring new opportunities for greater team-building, collaboration, knowledge-sharing, etc., hopefully in ways that will greatly enhance our abilities to deliver world-class digital government services.

SCR & QR Codes

2011-07-21T13:44:00.003-06:00

QR Codes are a great technology with lots of potential uses. I love being able to scan an item into my iPhone and then draw comparisons from all over the web. For example, when I go into Best Buy, I will usually scan the QR code of items that I'm interested in and then get price comparisons, product details, customer reviews, and other information about the product from across the web.

We are getting ready to release another state government online services with QR code functionality. In this case, it is the State Construction Registry which tracks activities and information relating to all construction projects throughout the state. It is a system that is widely used by contractors, sub-contractors, lien holders, local government, owners and buyers. The original system went into place just about 5 years ago. The new release, which is set to go live on August 1st will let the contractor print a QR code that can be posted at the construction site. Then, whenever any party needs to update a record associated with the project or get information regarding it, they can start simply by scanning the QR code.

Road Map for the Digital City

2011-06-30T16:49:00.002-06:00

On May 31st, New York City's Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Sterne sent me a copy of NYC's "Road Map for the Digital City: Achieving New York City's Digital Future". The document is a masterpiece at portraying the current status of digital government in the city and identifying key, realizable objectives for taking New York to the next level where it will be among the nation's leaders in digital government. This is a very good thing for all of us who live in the egov world. In just a few months NYC has gone from average to a position of leadership which will help drive us all forward. One of the great things about it is that Rachel appears to have the full support of Mayor Bloomberg, "We want New York City to be the nation's premier digital city..." If more political leaders shared that perspective and drive, we would see major improvements not only in the operations of government and the efficiencies that it provides citizens, but we would also see greater improvements in the upward trending of the innovation economy which is absolutely critical if this country is to get out of the funk that it has been in.

Immerse Yourself in Utah.gov 2011

2011-05-31T11:43:00.011-06:00

Utah.gov 2011

It's been two years since the state of Utah did a major upgrade to its website and a lot has changed during that time. The internet continues to represent an enormous opportunity for state government. In just five short years, the number of visitors to the Utah.gov domain has doubled, reaching 1.4 million unique visitors in March 2011. The new site has been developed, based on extensive research, to address the most important needs of Utah citizens. It takes into account changes that have occurred in Utah society and with technology. We appreciate the fact that Utah.gov has come to represent a trusted source for all kinds of information.

Two years ago, social media services, such as Twitter and Facebook, were still new to many Utahns, so we provided aggregation services where citizens could discover new agency Twitter feeds and begin to interact. The new site, integrates collaborative features into more aspects of the site so you will find information from Twitter and Facebook, and videos from YouTube integrated into many of the pages of Utah.gov. We continue to use the internet to open up government and make it more accessible through services like Open.Utah.gov. There's also lots of data available in a variety of formats at Data.Utah.gov. Of course, we try to be as open as possible while still maintaining the privacy of our individual citizens.

Still, the most important features on Utah.gov are the numerous services that save time and money for citizens, while bringing tremendous efficiencies to state government as well as the vast libraries of information on topics as varied as healthcare, transportation, caregivers, business creation, and hunting. In 2010, Utah citizens engaged the domain for over 25.1 million interactive transactions, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

Here's a brief introduction to the new site. We hope you enjoy it.

The best and worst states at providing broadband

2011-05-30T13:34:00.002-06:00

"The best and worst states at providing broadband" was a recent headline in Government Computer News.

The headline disturbs me, because it implies that places like Delaware, Rhode Island, and Washington, DC, which head the list are doing a much better job at delivering broadband service than some of the rural states such as Kansas, Idaho, or North Dakota. That may be the case... or it might night. The fact is, it is much easier to deliver broadband to a highly urbanized society that it is to someplace like South Dakota, or even Utah. It's like comparing South Korea to Australia. The cost to deliver broadband to remote areas is high and yet we are doing it and hopefully it will all pay dividends.

Project Prologue Documents Early Years of Egovernment in Utah

2011-05-30T12:45:00.006-06:00

In 1993, Governor Mike Leavitt, in his Information Highway speech, issued a call for Utah government agencies to open up government data, put government services online, and work together to create an enterprise model for digital government. After 18 years, we have made substantial progress towards these visionary goals. I'm glad to see that some of those initial years are partially chronicled in Project Prologue, a record of the Leavitt administration that is now hosted at Southern Utah University.

For information on information technology in Project Prologue, please visit:
http://leavitt.li.suu.edu/leavitt/category/information-technology/

Not everyone agreed with the Governor's vision for an electronic future. There are still a few around who don't perhaps, but it is the present, as evidenced by 25 million online transactions by Utah government in 2010. I don't think there is a single area in Utah government that hasn't been significantly influenced by it. Here's an article from 1994 that reminds us that there are always those who fight against the inevitable, and they actually did have some success in slowing it down:

IS `HIGHWAY' DESTINED TO BE DIRT ROAD?

The Shuttering of America.gov

2011-04-25T15:39:00.005-06:00

Many different voices on Twitter have been praising the State Department for the shuttering of America.gov. They say that it is a good thing the Department will now be spending more time reaching out through social media. America.gov is now a ghost town, a mere relic pointing to an archive of a not so distant past. This once beautiful website, which shared with the world an understanding of what the United States of America is about is gone. Here's what you now see:

This article on The Hill says that it is so the State Department can focus its precious resources on something more important, that is, on its social media efforts.

Personally, I'm having a hard time with this. After all, the purpose of Web 2.0 was to be able to maintain content in a way such that it doesn't have to be maintained all over the place. With a few inexpensive modifications (unlike some of the multimillion dollar websites that we sometimes hear about with the Federal government) America.gov could be cast in a way that it would be fed by the same social media efforts that the State department is talking about emphasizing, whether those are in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Most social media content is portable.

America.gov is too valuable of a property for this to happen. It now looks like the digital version of some of America's blighted urban areas. I hope someone has the sense to bring it back to life where it can prominently integrate with the social media efforts that have replaced it.

Community Broadband Networks

2011-04-04T17:30:00.004-06:00

An interesting article in Government Technology magazine refers to a new community broadband map published in March 2011. Just as interesting as who is on the map, is who is not. Several communities in Utah, for example, were among the very first to build community fibre networks. In 1997, a group of neighbors that had begun by networking their homes together for multi-player gaming started a company called Airswitch. The company began branching out to neighboring communities, including American Fork and Pleasant Grove. Eventually, the cities of Springville and American Fork purchased their portions of the network from Airswitch. Four years later, American Fork was looking to sell the network it had purchased. I am still a user of that network which has provided excellent service and high capacity bandwidth at reasonable prices for over 10 years.

The Airswitch experiment continued to spawn interest in community broadband in Utah. Even without these early networks showing on the community broadband map mentioned above, the extent of broadband networks in Utah is well under-represented. UTOPIA was created by 16 Utah cities as a way to bring high capacity network infrastructure to their communities. These cities, which are mostly not represented on the map, include Brigham City, Cedar City, Cedar Hills, Centerville, Layton, Lindon, Midvale, Murray, Orem, Payson, Perry, Riverton, Tremonton, Vineyard, Washington, and West Valley City.

iProvo was another broadband service that was also created initially by the city of Provo and later sold to a private provider. After lining up over 10,000 subscribers, but continuing to lose money, iProvo was sold to Broadweave Networks which today operates as http://www.veracitynetworks.com.

Even though as a general observation, the map shows more community networks than expected, the networks shown in Utah are actually less than expected.

Administrative Control of Utah.gov

2011-01-25T09:10:00.003-07:00

Recently, a hacker posted to his website that he will sell administrative control to a number of government websites, including Utah.gov and Michigan.gov. I tried to get my arms around that, and how it might be done. Problem is, Utah.gov is not a simple construct with an administrative console that controls it all so what exactly is this hacker selling for $99. Well, the Utah.gov domain consists of about 6 million pages, over 950 services, dynamic feeds, all somewhat linked together with a central portal which itself is an entire suite of applications built to support the complex array of interactions between citizens and government. It appears that the hacker gained access to a lightly used subdomain that is not even managed by the state's central IT so this was reviewed, patched, etc. With state and federal government websites proliferating as they have, this is almost an unfortunate inevitability as many government employees seek to deploy their content to the web outside the structured professional support channels. I regularly see sites across the country that have injected pages advertising products like cialis and viagra as rogue businesses try to bump up the search engine ratings of their websites through leveraging legitimate government sites. Even organizations with well-structure standards and deployment policies and procedures fall prey to this. With government being as diverse as it is, someone in each organization needs to remain vigilant and aware of these kinds of activities.

Best of 2010 for Digital Government / IT in Utah

2010-12-13T15:07:00.003-07:00

Almost time to wrap up 2010 in the way that I've been doing since 2002. Every year, I have created a top 10 list of digital government achievements in Utah government.

Utah completes its statewide consolidation of data centers. The consolidation was completed in June 2010 after just 18 months; right on schedule. In total, 38 data centers were consolidated, leaving just two primary data centers, one being primarily for backup and redundancy and being located off the Wasatch Front earthquake zone. The project will save the state over $4 million in ongoing costs. Over 1800 servers were virtualized and moved into these central locations, leaving less than 600 physical servers. A second phase of this project will produce additional benefits. The new consolidated center will also provide an important private cloud component in Utah's overall hybrid cloud strategy.
Utah again recognized as the #1 digital state. In August, the Center for Digital Government completed its biennial survey of the states, with Michigan and Utah both receiving "A" grades.
New Driver License System with associated online services goes live, lots of new automation added to every terminal. The new system is developed using Google Web Toolkit.
A new Jobs.Utah.gov. The Department of Workforce Services begins to accept Open IDs on their new MyCase System with single sign-on for once disjointed services. The economy unit publishes a new blog with the latest economic news.
Advances in mobile websites and services. The mobile version of Utah.gov adds location aware services to the state portal.
IT recommendations from Governor Gary Herbert's optimization team. The optimization team recognizes the value of technology and online services and encourages agencies to do more.
Online Continuing Education for the Division of Professional Licensing (DOPL). This is the beginning of a new trend as the Utah Department of Commerce works with online course providers using a web-based admin console and ties professional license holders directly to course providers for continuing education.
Growth of Broadband Use by Utah Citizens. Utah ranks #1 in broadband use among states, confirming the value of its efforts to push more services and interaction online.
Use of social media in critical situations. Twitter became a key communications tool in multiple emergency scenarios. When a large wildfire threatened the community of Herriman, city, county, and state emergency responders, along with traditional media used Twitter to get the word out to citizens about evacuation routes, fire conditions, emergency shelters, etc. In December, southern Utah communities were threatened by flooding and emergency responders again used Twitter to get information out to the community at large.
Public and Higher Education Added to Transparency Website. The Utah Public Finance Website has added data from education units across the state. This is a significant step forward in meeting the transparency requirements of the Utah State Legislature. While the site itself is much the same as last year, the addition of higher education institution, school districts, and charter school information is a major success.

Preparing for the next five years: checklist

2010-11-23T08:38:00.003-07:00

In looking forward to 2011-2015, there are some things that most government IT shops should have done by now. Here's a list of some of those:

Virtualized 90%+ of all server-based applications
Created and implemented a social media policy
Reduced physical server counts by upwards of 60-70%
Implemented a cloud strategy and begun moving major applications and services to the cloud
Developed a plan for supporting mobile platforms - smartphones and pad devices
Planned to support virtual desktop environments
Developed your first mobile apps and services, along with a mobile version of important websites
Consolidated data centers with a strong business continuity plan that supports redundancy for all IT critical applications and services
Have a well-established security structure and auditing process in place for online services and transaction-based applications
Implemented a first or second phase plan for sharing data on the web (data.gov)
Have a structure in place that is capable of implementing cross-agency, enterprise applications and services
Shortened development cycles by 50% or more
Have processes in place for monitoring and reporting IT performance on a regular basis
Incorporated GIS as a critical part of your go-forward strategy

Right now, I'm still pondering some of the key initiatives that will drive the next five years. I'll try to post more on that soon.

Flipboard

2010-10-28T13:33:00.006-06:00

I've been using it since the day it came out and it is perhaps my favorite app of all time. I've talked to people who said they had to get an iPad for this one app alone. If you understand the real value and potential of Twitter you must love Flipboard. I use it to aggregate information for Utah Government, Utah Education, Utah Media, and much more. It portrays why Twitter lists are so valuable.

Flipboard is personalized media for every user. You define what you want to see and Flipboard intelligently transforms 140 character Tweets to news content complete with video and images. My Flipboard is all about digital government and technology. Yours?

Tools like Flipboard are the future.

OPTIC Pushes Forward the Digital Agenda in Dominican Republic

2010-10-28T07:14:00.007-06:00

OPTIC, the central IT agency in the Dominican Republic is doing a great job in moving the digital agenda forward. A quick look at their website reveals a strong understanding of what is possible and that technology has the potential to make a huge difference in the lives of citizens. The office has published the third edition of Gobierno Digital, an issuu-based publication that provides a useful perspective on egovernment in the country. Their strategic plan is current, updated every year since 2006, although I would love to see a few more details of the kinds of projects they are actually moving forward. OPTIC is also doing a good job measuring their performance and I think understands where they are, as well as where they want to be.

OPTIC's goals for 2010:

Promover el desarrollo del Gobierno Electrónico en los ámbitos de decisión del sector público.
Promover el uso de los servicios de Gobierno Electrónico en la sociedad Dominicana y el sector privado.
Impulsar la capacitación de los empleados públicos en el uso de las TIC.
Acelerar el desarrollo integral del Gobierno Electrónico con criterios de eficacia, eficiencia y transparencia.
Evitar el doble empleo de recursos en el desarrollo del Gobierno Electrónico.
Racionalizar las inversiones y gastos en TIC del sector público.
Difundir las mejores prácticas en materia de Gobierno Electrónico.

Digital Disruption: Lessons for Government

2010-10-26T11:46:00.002-06:00

From Google's Eric Schmidt (publicly available in Foreign Affairs until 12/19/2010):

For the world's most powerful states, the rise of the interconnected estate will create new opportunities for growth and development, as well as huge challenges to established ways of governing. Connection technologies will carve out spaces for democracy as well as autocracy and empower individuals for both good and ill. States will vie to control the impact of technologies on their political and economic power.

Overall, an excellent treatise on how government can deal with the growing empowerment of individuals and networks.

Federal CTO Discusses Government's Use of New Technologies

2010-10-26T10:28:00.007-06:00

Aneesh Chopra was recently interviewed on the FCC's tech cast. I was glad to see that he is promoting ways to leverage mobile platforms to connect with citizens.

We are certainly supportive of that direction in the state of Utah. We have been adding citizen-facing apps and services to our site on a regular basis and will continue to work to make our services more usable by the growing numbers of citizens using iPhones, Androids, Windows 7 phones, and other types of smart devices. Earlier this year, we added local to our mobile website so that Utah.gov will automatically provide services and information based on your location (after you grant permission).

irekia - the most open of governments

2010-10-07T11:59:00.002-06:00

For many of the readers of this blog, the words irekia and euskadi mean little, if anything at all. But the Basque Country of Spain is quietly becoming a significant example of open and participatory government. The Basque Country website is built entirely around the concept of open government and teems with excellent examples of how government can involve its public. (The site is available in Spanish, Basque, and English). Every section of the site invites, almost demands, comment and participation. How does the Basque region resident avoid participating? And the open data portal on this site rivals that of any state in the U.S. And when you submit a proposal to the strategic planning process you can sign in with your Twitter account using OAuth. Polls, active listening, and multimedia all help make this government site work.

The Herriman Fire: Another Example of Social Media in an Emergency

2010-09-20T08:49:00.004-06:00

Yesterday afternoon I noticed an extraordinary amount of smog in the air and suspected that there must be another wildfire in the western part of the county, not an unusual event during August and September. What did become extraordinary was the size of this fire and the proximity to Utah neighborhoods. The next twelve hours became a flurry of activity as resources moved into play to keep thousands of homes safe from the rapidly spreading fire.

Camp Williams Fire - View from Traverse Mountain, Lehi from aesonica on Vimeo.

Herriman City has been very active in developing social media as a tool for emergency response and prominently features their Twitter feed, @bereadyherriman on their city's website.

A live ammunition exercise at Camp Williams, located on the county line between Salt Lake and Utah County, caused the fire to start at about 12:30 pm. Three hours later, when it became apparent that they would not be able to contain the fire, the military notified the Utah Fire Authority of the blaze. At about 5pm MST, the city began tweeting when it first became apparent that this fire might start to grow:

Per Herriman City, CERT teams please be on standby due to fire south of Herriman. NO ACTION IS REQUIRED AT THIS TIME."

The CERT teams were alerted.

Several official Twitter channels, including @HerrimanCity and @Utahgov began to share updates. Within a few hours, the dynamics of the situation had changed dramatically.

Everything south of Emmeline, Butterfield Parkway and Blackridge reservoir is now being MANDATORY evacuated. That's south of 14200 South.

Prior to that mandatory evacuation order issued over Twitter by city emergency officials, a shelter had been set up at the junior high school and then moved to the high school, evacuation routes were shared over Twitter, instructions were issued for evacuating animals the the county equestrian park, and FEMA had responded with support from the region. Governor Herbert was also responding on his Twitter channel and was on site. The common use of the #Herrimanfire hashtag made it easy to track all the traffic related to the fire.

In addition to Twitter, maps were posted to Google Maps and YouTube was used to share personal video of homes burning which were used by the media. When the city's website became stressed, citizens responded by reposting key information, like maps of the evacuation routes on sites like DropBox. At the same time, citizens were reminded by officials like @UT_MIT "Please do not self-deploy as a volunteer #Herrimanfire" and traffic management instructions were issued. Citizens posted photos and information to Flickr and other sites:

Reporters from traditional media channels, like @BenWinslow also became very active in the conversation and getting information out to the public:

Guv says 4 Blackhawk helicopters ordered to help. "Today looks very good for us to get this fire out." @fox13now #Herrimanfire #Utah

By this morning, the situation was more under control, about 10,000 acres had burned, more than 1600 homes were evacuated, four homes had burned to the ground. Seven area schools were closed and residents were notified via Twitter. Governor Herbert flew in a helicopter over the area to survey the situation. At about 7:30, he posted to Twitter:

Just landed after aerial tour of #Herrimanfire. An amazing scene, firefighting efforts are making a difference, even over last night.

Finally, Utah had one more example of the effectiveness of social media in helping to respond to a significant emergency.

Innovating in 2010

2010-07-20T14:19:00.009-06:00

I am currently looking at innovations across the country to glean ideas that we can build on within Utah government over the next decade. We have been able to leverage technology to save many millions of dollars for state government and I am very certain that there are still many opportunities that will produce incredible results over the next ten years. Many of these innovations have not yet been identified so we are currently working hard to identify those that we can implement in 2010 and 2011 while also creating our ideas database for the decade. This year is particularly challenging because I have not yet seen many, if any, examples of what it is that we want to create that will elevate and expand our digital community.

Most of what I see in the growing number of egovernment bulletins and publications is more of the same, the latest government experiment with second life, some new online services, more use of social media. Nothing wrong with any of these, except that we can stop pretending that they're innovative. We've been doing these things for years now. Some of these innovations have become very mainstream and common; even most counties and city governments now use Twitter and Facebook; how effectively is another question. I'm not certain when virtual 3d environments will become more common or whether government in Second Life will ever become ubiquitous. I'm thinking that the platform will have to change before that takes off.

The rest of what makes up egovernment in 2010 has become pretty standard across government, online services and information is the norm, while the presentation and search tools continue to improve, the improvements are mostly incremental. The egov community has grown tremendously thanks to Govloop and Twitter with collaboration reaching a crescendo these past two years. Last year, augmented reality looked like it held some promise and it still may. The semantic web is still ahead of us in terms of data integration to its fullest degree at an enterprise level as well as between government enterprises.

There are still innovations to be had, but the best of those seem like they will require more work on the back end to really make them successful. I believe that for egov to reach its zenith, it will need to force a more serious restructuring of government at a larger level that extends across tiers of govt.

Whether those of us in the U.S. realize it, there are some great innovations happening all over the world right now in this area. Just look at the ambitious goals outlined for Singapore in iN2015:

To be #1 in the world in harnessing infocomm to add value to the economy and society
To realise a 2-fold increase in the value-add of the infocomm industry to S$26 billion
To realise a 3-fold increase in infocomm export revenue to S$60 billion
To create 80,000 additional jobs
To achieve 90 per cent broadband usage in all homes
To achieve 100 per cent computer ownership in homes with school-going children

Although those goals are not necessarily egovernment goals, they are promoted through digital government and will have major impact when achieved. I have been fascinated to see where innovations are cropping up in places like Veracruz, Mexico, Peru, Estonia, Bahrain, etc.

Related Links
MIT World - The Future of Government - Citizen Engagement

Y Xu - E-Government: Innovation in the Public Sector

Architecting the Connected Government: Practices and Innovations in Singapore