Hold On at EPA

Hillary Clinton has called for a "hold" on Governor Leavitt's appointment to lead the EPA. Her rationale is based on an EPA report on air quality in NYC post-911. Here's the latest press from:

New York Times
New York Post
Sacramento Bee
Lancaster Eagle Gazette
Salt Lake Tribune

Clinton's statement and letter to President Bush
EPA's ongoing response to September 11th

  posted by David @ 9:37 AM

 
State Websites

I forget that NIC is not the only provider of portal services based on a self-supporting model. I was reminded yesterday that Arizona uses IBM and Texas uses Bearing Point. Right now here at NASCIO, we are getting ready for a panel of new CIOs that will discuss the advantages of having a public service or a private business background as preparation for their position.

  posted by David @ 8:08 AM

 
Salt Lake County

Bart Barker reports on the redesign of the Salt Lake County website. It looks good, but I sure wish they would use a utah.gov URL rather than dot org. Would you think of slco.org if you were looking for the site?

I have to disagree with the comparison of the Workman/Anderson websites. Way too much scrolling on Rocky's site.

By the way, Bill Gratsch has added a blog to eGovlinks.

Here's an interesting company looking to capitalize on the effort to break down silos in government. It's name is Silo Smashers.

  posted by David @ 5:19 PM

 
Hype or Transformation?

Carolyn Purcell, the former CIO of the State of Texas, began the 3:30 session of NASCIO talking about future transformation and opportunities for IT and eGov when one of her panelists, Todd Sanders - CIO of the City of Tuscon, threw cold water on the discussion by suggesting that the whole promise of eGov had been overhyped. I don't necessarily agree with that, but think that we are still early in the process and that making a transformation to what was labeled as iGov in the Western CIO Summit is a critical next step that NASCIO has barely discussed. I was shocked by a GSA flyer that is being distributed here that shows that only 4 states have partnered with the federal government on the Recreation. gov project: Utah, Virginia, North Dakota, and Maryland. This project has an excellent vision and the federal project manager did a great job putting together an XML standards document to guide the implementation. It integrates GIS and provides opportunities for private companies to reutilize the public data that is available through open standards. These integration projects are part of the future for government, particularly if their is interest in reinventing government. The problem is, to realize the efficiencies presented by some of these opportunities, we must restructure and that is hard. That is where we must get MORE creative in designing opportunities for displaced personnel that are much more exciting than the positions that we are displacing them from. Then, we must create excitement over such opportunities. Richard Greene talked about his belief that we would be flying around like the Jetsons when we (my generation) reached age 35. That has come and gone, and many of us have lost that dream as we look out towards the future.

  posted by David @ 4:59 PM

 
Bioterrorism Conference

The Department of Health is sponsoring the Utah Bioterrorism Conference on October 6-8.

The Infrastructure Security Partnership also has an upcoming workship on Sep. 15-16.

Rock Regan, CIO of Connecticut, moderated yesterday's session on homeland security yesterday. This afternoon, he mentioned that he is still blogging, but only internally right now.

The Governor's site has been update to be more consistent with Utah.gov.

  posted by David @ 2:53 PM

 
David Brin

David Brin was the morning keynote for NASCIO today. He is a science fiction writer, but was much more philosophical today, discussing his non-fiction work, The Transparent Society. Apparently, he is a blogger, but I get an error when I try to access his blog. Can we have both freedom and security?, he asks. Yes, through reciprocal accountability.

Back in Utah, legislators are hearing about collection problems with the Tax Commission and the University of Utah is adopting a new security policy.

Forty-four state CIOs are present at this year's NASCIO event. Washington Technology reports on Kim Campbell's keynote from yesterday's excellent session.

A new GEIA report on the importance of interoperability

Here's an interesting resource: List of Think tanks

Just got out of the NASCIO session on Enterprise Architecture. We need to complete the documentation, but Utah is actually ahead of many states and the federal government in terms of implementation and Minnesota mentioned that they had stolen some stuff from us in creating their EA planning. We could also use the Federal performance reference model concept with Utah Tomorrow data to somewhat duplicate that effort and integrate it with other developing reference models. One problem is that, at times, we are going backwards rather than making continual steady forward progress...

Governing Magazine's day one coverage of NASCIO

Karen Evans' vision for eGov

  posted by David @ 9:59 AM

 
More NASCIO

I ran into the people from Verisign down here which reminded me that we want to start a new project for implementing electronic forms. I think that the timing may be right this time. Forms are adding new workflow, database integration, and security functionality that will make this much more palatable. I won't discuss specific products until we get a little further along...

  posted by David @ 4:53 PM

 
U of U Supercomputer

The University of Utah is putting in a new clustered supercomputer that will be the fastest in the State. I wonder if there are any projects that could be enabled through a state partnership to exploit some of this computing power...

It is nice when your State transportation director is regularly thinking of how technology can enhance what happens with highways. For example...

  posted by David @ 4:43 PM

 
NASCIO

I am at the NASCIO conference in Scottsdale this morning where the first speech was from Kim Campbell, Canada's Prime Minister. Very dynamic. Her main point was to suggest a new role for CIOs in helping to ensure that the public decision making process is sound and relies on the best information available rather than being based on schemas or preconceptions. I'll write a little more on my main weblog when I have more time....

  posted by David @ 10:41 AM