Technology in Utah

Schwarzenegger signs Spyware Bill

2004-10-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Utah is no longer the only state with a spyware bill. California's governor signed their spyware bill this week. Ben Edelman posted an excellent summary of the bill and suggests that it falls short in addressing the more controversial issues.

Val Oveson accepts position in NASCIO

2004-10-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

Utah CIO, Val Oveson, was recently announced as a new officer in the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO). Val has been Utah's CIO since January 2003. At the NASCIO convention in New Orleans, David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government, suggested that the best way for states to address fiscal woes is not to increase taxes, but to improve upon their use of technology to drive down cost. We did this in the Utah Dept. of Administrative Services over the past 12 years with some good results. Right now, we need a new phase of innovation and coordinated efforts to reach a little higher if we are going to remain among those states recognized as the best for fiscal and technology management.

Osborne also suggests that IT policy-making should be separate from IT operations. This is the way that it has been in Utah and most IT directors in the state agree with the model, although there is a move to consolidate the two organizationally. Perhaps I'll pick up a copy of his book: "The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis." It looks like it has some good ideas for the presentation I need to make to the Utah Technology Commission this month.

CNN on Utah's Spyware Law

2004-06-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

An article on CNN reviews Utah's new spyware law and asks if it can be successful. The article, written by the Univ. of Washington's Anita Ramasastry builds on Ben Edelman's treatise on the subject.

Ramasastry has written some excellent articles on government technology issues, including this one on MATRIX, although I do not necessarily share the same concerns.

Enterprise Architecture in the States

2004-06-04T23:41:00.000-07:00

Enterprise architecture is being championed in today's world by state governments in the United States. In conjunction with FEAPMO at the federal level and a few advanced nations, U.S. states have breathed life into the discipline and produced a wide variety of published material on the topic. In addition to the Chief Information Security Officer, the Enterprise Architect is probably the most prominent enterprise level position to follow on the heels of the CIO as new positions within the discipline of information technology at the state level. In Utah, we now have both - officially or de facto.

The EA momentum is being heavily supported by the state CIOs, in addition to NASCIO.

2004-05-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Secure Authentication Infrastructure

Many Dutch are concerned about pushing for more egovernment services until a secure common authentication architecture can be put in place.

2004-05-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

Golden Shield's Internet Censorship

Xiao Ming of the Epoch Times reports on China's "Golden Shield" program which has clamped down on internet usage throughout the country.

British Telecom's promise to deliver 512K speed broadband is being questioned as some look at what France is doing across the sound and rolling out a service 12 times that speed over existing copper phone cabling. Meanwhile Qwest's promise to speed up the delivery of 256K DSL has derailed UTOPIA's promise of fiber to the home in some areas of Utah.

2004-05-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

Humans in the Portal

In an article (in WebProNews, popular columnist Gerry McGovern asks, "How much human support should your website need?" He answers the question with an example from Utah,

"In 2003, Utah.gov was named the best state government web portal in America by the Center for Digital Government. "Our goal is to use technology to make state government services more efficient and accessible," said Governor Mike Leavitt. "This award shows we're making real progress in our efforts to move more government services online instead of in line."

Utah sees its website as a way to deliver better services while at the same time saving money through greater efficiency. A key feature of Utah.gov is its '24/7 Live Help' service. I tested it on a Saturday morning in Ireland. Within seconds I had a friendly reply. I asked if lots of Utah citizens availed of such a service. I was told that it was very popular. "

The value of live help service can be difficult to determine. It worked well in Utah by coordinating it with other 24x7 service support.

Utah boat owners can now renew their boat registration online.

2004-04-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Cybersecurity

Just finished the morning's first session, on cybersecurity. The presenters were very general and didn't provide a lot of new or detailed information that might help states structure or enhance their cyber-security efforts or even coordinate more effectively with the federal government. Hamit Yurin of the NCSD mentioned that they have 4 million subscribers to the National Cyber Alert system. Indiana said that they have been able to access $1 million from ODP funds for intrusion detection. I would love to get 1/10th of that. Indiana's cyber security efforts are supported by an organization called CERIAS that is run out of Purdue University. In responses to the online poll of CIOs, only 18% said that they were familiar with the US-CERT definition of cyber-security.

It looks like a google search on cybersecurity in government still brings up my other weblog as a top ten result even though I have been less regular in posting to that category lately. And no government entities show up as top search results meaning these entities need to better understand how to get their information out to users who might be looking for it...

2004-04-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

April Night in Chicago

I haven't spent much time in Chicago, but it is a much more beautiful than I had anticipated. My room overlooks the Chicago River with a view out onto Lake Michigan. The city lights are spectacular. The air is crisp with an occasional whisp of bakery scents for additional flavor. We spent two hours at the Lucky Strike where they had two sumptuous spreads, one with about a dozen different pizzas and the other, a sandwich and salad bar. Tomorrow, I'll head home after three more NASCIO tech sessions.

2004-04-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

Information Technology and Public Policy

Three state chiefs-of-staff just finished speaking about information technology and its relationship to public policy in the governor's office.

Here are my unedited notes. I will comment later in my Government and Technology weblog.
Toby Roth, Alabama Gov. Riley
Intersection of IT and Pubic Policy
Leaner government - Gov Schwarzenegger,
"We have a typewriter govt. in an internet age."
"Is IT instinctive to policy makers, generally no" - but it doesn't take long for them to realize the importance
"We are just tinkering around the edges of reform if IT is not a central part of our effort."
E-Government is a reiteration of the campaign message
"eGov message did not work well in lean budget times" - why not?, eGov can lead to leaner, more cost-effective govt.
"How's Bubba going to react" - he likes hunting and fishing licenses online
IT Planning -
Estimate that Alabama spends $150-$200M on IT
Executive Order will come out reviving the Office of Information Technology which will require an annual IT budget, require
an annual IT plan, annual technology report, monitoring projects, etc. - this is not an effort to consolidate IT, but
to coordinate it. There is a lot of opposition in Alabama to IT consolidation (that is apparent)
Align policy advisors and CIOs. CIO is a deputy to the Finance Director, not a cabinet member. Demonstrates the weakness
of central IT in the state. CIO is in a merit position. He feels that having an appointed CIO could undermine the longterm
viability of IT policy.
Moved ahead with self-funded egov services which has been one of the successes of the Riley administration.
Alabama has only had one-term governors for twenty years.
No Service Level Agreements at operation IT level to tie it with policy - performance measures.

Bill Goetz, North Dakota
Second longest term for current chiefs of staff.
IT requires a lot of strategic planning and progressive thinking. North Dakota - 65% of citizens have a computer, 70% have
access to internet. High expectation for IT in government. Agencies want their own technology, own hardware, own hardware.
"We have turf, we have a culture" IT dept. actions are viewed as "empire building" by agencies and by legislature.
Governor's policies must be clearly understood. People in IT need to know what the Gov wants to accomplish in econ.
development, education, corrections, etc. We need to think long term in IT. We cannot expect an IT base for CIOs without
support, understanding of policy issues.
He thinks the CIO should be a cabinet position. The IT dept. is not only an area where the technical stuff gets done. Where
are we going with linking higher ed with economic development. CIO is more than a technician, more than an administrator,
more than a politician.
We need a holistic approach to public policy, collaboration between IT, agencies, legislature, and public-at-large.
Functional consolidation - recognize that these functions take time. Need for flexibility.
Planning
Successful projects in ND - Connect ND, integrated university and government networks into a "seamless" network. "Will be the
first of its kind in the nation
StageNet - broadband connection to ND communities, libraries, municipalities, state agencies, all shared on the same network.
Legislators must become investors in the process (what process? planning? budgeting? implementing? - he didn't say)
Need to conduct public outreach to get legislative support. Drive the agenda through K-12 education.
(He was quite vague about a lot of things)
Conflict between government and private sector cultures - things take time in government. Says that CIOs need to be more
patient in the public sector.
Comprehensive IT planning and performance measures are reviewed by IT and then by Gov's Office.

Bill Leighty, Virginia
In the third day of a budget impass. Leighty was not present, but teleconferenced due to this. May have to take some proactive steps in shutting down state government - will not have a budget.

51% of CIOs rated their relationship with their chief of staff as an 8 or higher on a scale of 1-10. 35% for their relationship with
the Governor. 26% rated their relationship/access with the Governor as a "2".

No one could answer Gov. Warner's question about how much Virginia is spending on technology. Most governors do not run
on a technology platform.

"Technology is generally not the highest priority unless it becomes a problem." Gov. Warner made it a priority by creating a
central technology organization. Virginia is consolidating through a process - small, then medium, then large agencies.
CIO is in an independent agency (VITA) from any branch.

They had 15 different contracts with Dell with 15 different prices. They expect $100 million in savings through their IT
consolidation process. The problem is, they had more to gain.

Laura Larimer asked about VITA's independence and if it could lose its correlation with the governor's agenda by being an
independent agency. He responded about that being a good thing, particularly since VA's governor is elected for only
one four-year term. Legislature holds more power over long-term policy.

Absolutely, have performance measures built into VITA so agencies have clear expectations.

Thom Ruble reviewed 44 state-of-the-state addresses and only saw the words "information technology" twice and "e-government"
twice.

2004-04-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

"Blogs as a Disruptive Technology"

Blawgs have taken off in the legal community. I think that is because many attorneys are more concerned about content/substance than they are about design. Jerry Lawson just published a new article, "Blogs as a Disruptive Technology" in Law Practice magazine.

2004-04-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

Technology Champion

Former Governor Jim Geringer of Wyoming received NASCIO's "technology champion" award, a very worthy recipient. Gov. Geringer has long been a great advocate for GIS in government, but has also done much more. He gave an excellent address, among his quotes, "Today (in technology in government), if you're not making decisions, you're not adding value." Then, he quoted Governor Leavitt, "put a face on it (tech issues), connect it with people." And, "data that does not lead to a decision is not very good data." He also quoted his favorite Rock Springs mayor, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got." He stressed the importance of using web services to integrate data from various sources - leave the data where it is. Overall, he demonstrated a great understanding of how to use technology to improve the process and results of government. Former Governor Engler of Michigan, another good tech governor, was also in attendance for the presentation.

2004-04-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

Utah in NASCIO Presentations

In Zittrain's presentation on the internet, security, and privacy, he began with a discussion on the origins of the internet and the initial planning diagram with Utah in the center (Utah was one of the original four nodes of ARPANET - see Vint Cerf's "How the Internet Came to Be")

Later on, Hank Garie, who heads up the Geospatial One-Stop project did a demonstration of geodata.gov using Utah and showed how to add layers of cadastral data and then specific data about the range of the sage grouse. Very interesting.

2004-04-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

NASCIO in Chicago

I am at the mid-year meeting of the National Association of State CIOs for a couple of days. The first two sessions have been quite interesting, particularly the keynote by Jonathan Zittrain of the Harvard Law School. He has posted Realvideo of some of his earlier presentations.

2004-03-19T22:33:00.000-08:00

Spyware Control Act

Benjamin Edelman has prepared a very thoughtful analysis of Utah's Spyware Control Act.

Related news:
Senate Takes Aim at Spyware
States Join Spyware Battle
Top Web Businesses Oppose Utah Spyware Law
Spyware Act Has Detractors

2004-02-22T07:26:00.000-08:00

E-Government and UTOPIA

An article on Business Wire recognizes Utah for being "ahead of the pack" in online government. Two studies performed by the Center for Digital Government recognize the state for "exceptional management, functionality, and affordability."

Keynote Systems announced a new e-government performance index this week. The index measures the performance and availability of key government services.

This article in the Miami Herald discusses SB66, the anti-UTOPIA bill sponsored by Bill Hickman, that just passed the Utah Senate. Qwest, who is strongly against UTOPIA, has beening pouring money into campaigns and has perhaps the largest lobbying force on Capitol hill.

2004-02-14T21:08:00.000-08:00

Foxpro Blog

Craig Berntson of Salt Lake City maintains a FoxPro blog. I used to love dBase II back in the early to mid-eighties. I think I created dozens of dBase systems and then even used FoxPro for awhile. I gave it up for MS Access in the early nineties and haven't used any of them much since I became a heavy user of the internet. The FoxBlog does talk about a little more than just FoxPro however.

2004-02-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

Utah Tech Roundup

UITA sponsored a roundtable discussion with two gubernatorial candidates last week, Karras and Matheson. Karras wants to double the number of high-tech companies in Utah (currently about 2,600).

Lindon-based Helius releases new MediaCore products.

Davis School District puts GeoMax into all its classrooms.

Aradyme, of American Fork, has introduced the Vital Processing Systems transaction gateway into its "Next Generation" database platform. Aradyme will partner with Redcon on the Utah Voter Registration project.

The opening of Northface University's Salt Lake City campus is covered in Information Week.

New engineering majors at the University of Utah increase by 32%.

2004-02-08T22:17:00.000-08:00

UWIN Un-named

I missed this article about UWIN in last week's Salt Lake Tribune (it doesn't mention UWIN, but that is what it is about).

2004-02-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hi Tech Champions Wanted

Lisa Carricaburu writes in the Salt Lake Tribune that Utah is slipping off the map of tech hubs. No longer is Utah home to the corporate headquarters of leading tech companies like Novell, WordPerfect, and Iomega. There are more subtle changes. Regardless, it is critical that the winner of this years gubernatorial campaign place high tech growth as a key to an overall economic development strategy. The Legislature could play a role, but seems more interested in playing to interests like Qwest as evidenced by its attack on UTOPIA.

2004-02-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

Utah .Net Users Group

The Utah .Net Users Group has spawned some new blogs, mostly associated with Microsoft technology and Northface University. For example, Don Box is a Microsoft XML messaging architect. Aaron Skonnard, an instructor at Northface, authors The XML Files. Ben Miller is the lead for XML Web Services at Microsoft.

2004-02-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

New Utah County Venture

Tuffsafe of Provo now offers several new models of wall safes online.

2004-01-18T21:04:00.000-08:00

Wavetronix Moves to Lindon

Wavetronix, a Provo company with some terrific traffic sensor technology, is moving to expanded office space in Lindon. The traffic sensors can be managed from a basic Palm device. The company was named as a "top 20" technology company in Utah in 2002.

2004-01-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

American Fork city has a new website - a MAJOR improvement from anything they have had previously. The still lack online services. And I don't understand why they are picking up Christmas trees on January 26th. That seems a little late to me even though I still have a few Christmas lights to take down. An article in NewUtah compares the AF site with Alpine City's site.

UTOPIA will be a hot topic during the Utah Legislative session which begins tomorrow.

Several Provo residents are arguing against the implementation of iProvo's broadband network.

A new 6,000 square foot home in Park City is integrating a new type of LCD computer monitor into the windows and walls of the home - a prototype for the future.

Utah venture capitalists invest in New Mexico's Exagen.

Aradyme Development, an American Fork high tech company has hired former Siebel exec. Don Hutchings, as their VP of sales.

Aradyme Development Corp. is a "Next Generation" database platform company. It develops and distributes integrated software solutions and services that help companies manage and grow their businesses. It uses proprietary technology to rapidly build integrated database applications in a drag-and-drop environment that are more powerful, flexible and yet more affordable than today's leading alternatives. They also extract, cleanse and prepare data in a fraction of the traditional time for migration to other industry-leading database applications, regardless of the platform or schema. Aradyme-based solutions remain flexible to real-time additions, modifications and changes, allowing applications to continually evolve real-time with business processes. Aradyme is currently involved in custom application development and data migration services in a variety of government and business sectors.

2003-11-19T10:10:00.000-08:00

E-911

I am in the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice committee presently which will hear Brad Dee's proposed E-911 bill in a few minutes. H.R. 2898 passed the U.S. House earlier this month and will provide $l00 million a year in matching federal funds for E911 Phase II implementation. Rep. Dee's bill will add a 16 cent fee to fund E-911 at the state level. It also creates a committee that will manage the fund created through collection of these fees. Cathy DuPont drafted the bill and is now discussing changes to the bill to address concerns of the committee.

Rep. Lance Christensen stated his opposition to the bill, stating that he thinks there is a need to explore alternative funding.

When it came time for a vote, Rep. Christensen voted in favor, allowing the bill to pass out unanimously from committee. It will now be forwarded during the 2004 session as a committee bill.

2003-11-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

Public Utilities and Technology

I am in the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee where Wayne Harper is discussing his Internet Privacy bill. Last year, the bill was vetoed. He is arguing that the State should set a standard for privacy and security that can be a model for business and others. The bill focuses on assuring that all state websites provide a privacy notice. The notice should inform citizens on how their information is being utilized by the state. Rep. Allen asked for clarification on why the bill was vetoed. Rep. Harper said that it was a result of concern over security issues. He said that items of concern have been removed from the bill. The bill also applies to local government and education. Rep. Harper thinks it is a good policy statement for the state.

Doug Foxley spoke on behalf of AOL Time Warner, eBay, AT&T, and Comcast. Last year, he vigorously opposed the bill. He said that a similar bill was a huge problem for Minnesota and they have significant concerns (he was referring to the wrong bill). Now,he has no opinion on this bill. So no one else spoke in opposition. Another legislator was wondering if the bill would affect the Wildlife draw on the internet. Rep. Harper answered that it would not. The committee voted to support the bill as a committee bill.

He then spoke about an identity theft bill that he is proposing for this year which is the one that Foxley was opposing.

2003-10-26T19:50:00.000-08:00

Portfolio Management

A Baseline article in Business Engine, Which Projects Are Worth Your Time?, says that enterprise portfolio management is finally taking hold. It is a dream in most states, but one in which we seem to be making some progress, however slowly.

Another article in Baseline calls Radio the most powerful piece of software in Microsoft due to Robert Scoble's corporate blogging.

2003-10-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

Fresno Regional E-Government System

Communities in the San Joaquin Valley are working together to create the Fresno Regional E-Government System. The system appears to be a collaborative effort to develop common e-government applications for communities in the Fresno area. Clovis is the latest city to join the coalition.

There is also a concerted broadband effort. Here's what they say in their plan:

• We are not alone! In the course of the last year, we have encountered literally dozens of cities, counties, non-profits, and community groups that are taking a proactive role in the delivery of telecommunications services in their town or region. From New Zealand to urban Chicago to rural Georgia to suburban Utah, the communities may be pursuing different approaches, but they are all working toward the same end: accelerate the deployment of current and next-generation broadband services in their regions to gain and sustain economic competitiveness and improve quality of life.

2003-10-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

M-Logs

I use various blogs to stream news feeds into several eGov sites. Now that tools like M-Logs make it possible to upload video and text from your cell phone, I need to look at replacing my old Nextel phone with something a little more state-of-the-art. Then, I can post video from events like the Best of the Web awards in New York City directly to sites like Utah.gov via a cell phone or PDA.

Phlog supports a community of mobile photo bloggers.

2003-10-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Cyberterror Hits the Blogosphere

Newsday reports on Friday's cyber-terror attack that impacted several prominent blogs.

On the agenda at the November cyber-journalists conference:

* Flogging the blogs: Debating best practices
o Now that news sites are increasingly publishing Weblogs, questions of standards, practices and ethics are being raised. Should Weblog entries be edited before they are published, after they are published -- or not at all? Should the rules be different for blogging opinions and breaking news events? Is there a conflict when journalists blog on topics they also cover in news stories? Hear what bloggers and their editors think and join in the debate.

Congress is sure not doing much to support enterprise egov.

2003-10-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

Future Workforce Trends

This morning's presenter was futurist Joyce Gioia of the Herman Group. She spoke about her book, Impending Crisis, which deals with addressing future workforce issues. There has been a lot of debate on this recently and how a number of trends such as overseas sourcing, immigration policy, etc. will impact it.

Utah has commonalities with most states in terms of business practices, organizational issues, employees, innovation roadblocks, etc. We have quite a few of these with the state of Indiana.

2003-10-22T20:10:00.000-07:00

W3C in Hong Kong, Spain

Interoperable standards are winning the day as evidenced by the expansion of W3C worldwide. Earlier this week, they opened their Spain office in Oviedo.

The Hong Kong office is helping to sponsor the upcoming China International Forum on WWW Development.

2003-10-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

Lieberman AWOL

An article in the The HILL points out that Joe Lieberman has been absent from most of the Environmental and Public Works committee hearings and also has failed to respond to requests to meet with Governor Leavitt to address any concerns associated with his hold. Senator Imhofe of Oklahoma asserts that Lieberman doesn't really care what is happening in the committee, but is only concerned about presidential politics. I think he's right.

The annual Computer and Technology Showcase is scheduled for Salt Lake City on November 5th and 6th in the Salt Palace.

Found: Digitalearth.org, a collaborative geotech weblog

2003-10-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

PSSG

PSSG is NIC's central development group headed by Ric Brown. Ric used to be the GM for Utah Interactive and has some great ideas for sharing information and technology between states.

Right now, Kansas is sharing information on their trucking portal. It is a single point of access for truckers to make tax payments, obtain certificates, report statistical information, etc. You can also register for oversize/overweight permits. Kansas is also integrating a truck routing information system that is GIS-enabled with information on stuff like routes where hazardous chemicals are allowed, etc. Good ideas...

2003-10-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

Portals and Digital Government Maturity

Mark Struckman of the Center for Digital Government gave an excellent presentation on the latest data and activity on egov portals, including a review of the top finishers in the Best of the Web competition. Mark mentioned the use of web services and portlets as key to the progress of egov services. Montgomery County which was the top ranked counted is using portlets and is also making good use of GIS - both of these are very much on our product management agenda in Utah.

Mark also talked about integrating recreation opportunities from multiple jurisdictions. That project already exists, but we need more states to champion state and local integration with recreation.gov which already has an XML standard with instructions for integration process.

Another service is the video library that is being touted by Boston which placed third among cities - something we could easily add to Utah.gov.

I need to move a few things around with our RSS feeds and then add the XML button to all of our portal-based RSS feeds so people can incorporate the State's news into other sites as well as add them to their aggregators and email subscription services.

This session of the conference is being held in the penthouse of Le Parker Meridien which has an incredible view overlooking Central Park and Midtown Manhattan. I'll post some photos when I get back.

2003-10-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

Marketing and Adoption

The current session is focused on marketing and adoption of eGov services. Increasing adoption rates is a current emphasis of the Utah egovernment product management council. Indianapolis is presenting on their contractor licensing system.

Rich Olsen and Audry Hinman are talking about "smart marketing" in Montana.

2003-10-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Iowa Develops 99-County Service

Right now, the State of Iowa is discussing how they worked with 99 county treasurers to develop an online property tax system. They worked with Iowa Interactive to develop both an intranet, as well as a public-facing system. To begin with, many of the treasurers did not even have a PC, let alone email.

Integrating between multiple software vendors was one of the biggest challenges. There was a big education process. 150,000 electronic payments were made during the most recent period for a total of $130 million.

UII has worked with several counties individually to accept online property tax payments.

Iowa Association of Counties
Article: Dispelling Myths about the New Property Tax System

Tim Erickson is following up with information on Iowa Interactive's partnership with Des Moines City to develop an online parking ticket system that receives about 100 payments a day.

The final presentation for this section is on Utah's One-Stop Business Registration System.

2003-10-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

eGov Leadership Conference

I arrived in NYC late last night for the 1st Annual NIC eGovernment Leadership Conference. I learned that former Governor of Dan Evans of Washington is on the NIC Board of Directors and suggested to him that he push for a center for eGov at the University of Washington. The Graduate School of Public Affairs is now named after him. I received my Masters of Public Administration there and think that an eGov program would add to their overall program. They should also consider adding eGov to the core curriculum. Governor Evans was a friend of Brewster Denny and was the governor at the same time that Dr. Denny was the US Ambassador to the United Nations back in the sixties.

Governor Evans told me how he and Governor Rampton worked together to create the NGA.

As a former IR (International Relations) major, I made the necessary pilgrimage to the UN, this being the first time that I have ever spent any time in New York. The NYPD had about 100 officers hanging around across the street - looked like some kind of SWAT training.

The Utah Legislature's website was ranked seventh in this year's Digital Legislatures Survey by the Center for Digital Government. Congratulations to those who have been working hard to make the Legislature more open and accessible.

nyc bloggers reports that there are over a million blogs here in the city.

2003-10-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

XML in the Enterprise

An online poll by the Enterprise Systems Journal shows that 56% of enterprises are using XML with at least one application. Nine percent are currently researching the subject and 26% have no implementation plans.

Utah's law enforcement community is developing an excellent concept for how to use XML to facilitate interoperability between state, local, and federal partners. Earlier this week they made some excellent progress towards setting a standard for exchange between radio dispatch centers.

2003-10-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

New Utah RSS Feed

Newsnet, BYU's award winning online news service has now added an RSS feed for their metro (Utah) section.

Ross Mayfield has been blogging for a year now on all kinds of interesting stuff.

2003-10-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

MATRIX

Two more states, Alabama and Louisiana, have pulled out of the MATRIX project. I'm wondering if there's more here than meets the eye. Georgia is also raising concerns.

Another botched large-scale system install in King Country, WA, is causing problems. It appears that the county abandoned a $38 million Peoplesoft payroll project. We recently installed SAP payroll, the project was pretty successfu. The biggest issue was repeated delays in final implementation, but the testing and user participation was critical. Do not rush to implement a payroll system I guess is the conclusion. Our system was in the $4 to $5 million range. I can't imagine overseeing a $38 million project that resulted in failure. Little tolerance for that.

2003-10-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Utah.gov

A recent press release on Utah.gov and its recognition as the top state portal in the nation states that this is the first time the portal has been recognized in the top five. That's not quite accurate. Utah's portal was recognized as the runner up (#2) in 1996.

Al Sherwood and I are on our way to New York for an e-government leadership conference. It will be followed with the award presentation on Thursday night.

I was fortunate to attend an excellent work session earlier this afternoon on interoperability. The goal was to establish standards for sharing data between public safety dispatch agencies or PSAPs. The result was the refinement of several Justice XML standards and the acceptance of the Jabber open standard for instant messaging to enable instant message service between console operators, mobile clients, etc. There are some other potential benefits from implementation of these standards that I will discuss later, but I was excited to see this group of local and state agencies work together to effectively accomplish something that is going to yield some very tangible benefits.

The University of Utah is now installing fire extinguishers in their buildings that are electronically monitored for pressure, presence and obstruction to access. Makes a lot of sense and frees up yet another task that is traditionally assigned to staff while providing thorough documentation. Sounds like a great deal. I'll discuss it with DFCM (facilities management) as something to implement in state buildings (we have several hundred spread across the state) - this would ensure that the process is taken care of - maybe we can tie it into the wireless projects which would eliminate the task of running additional wiring.

2003-09-26T02:33:00.000-07:00

The Smartest State?

Morgan Quitno is back at it again. They published their ranking of the "smartest" states today with Massachussetts at the top of the list - they were seventh last year. How did they get so much smarter in just one year? You got me... Utah dropped in their rankings to the middle of the pack, from 17th to 25th. I guess people are just getting dumber around here.

In another note, SAP and Accenture are combining several offices. The State of Utah uses SAP for its payroll system.

2003-09-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

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

2003-09-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2003-09-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2003-09-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2003-09-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2003-09-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

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

2003-09-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

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...

2003-09-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

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...

2003-09-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

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....

2003-05-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

Utah Labs

Jim Stewart of UEN is a deep thinker who often comes up with creative ideas. He wants to put Utah back at the forefront of networking through the creation of Utah Labs. Utah Labs would be a collaborative effort between education, military, government, and commercial entities. This is a grand idea. Let's do it. We already have the foundation with the collaboration that has been developing on the UWIN project. How about if we begin to meet online once a week and at the University of Utah or on Capitol Hill once a month. There are many reasons to do this, including Pete's work on developing regional exchange points, the emergence of enterprise IT projects under Governor Leavitt such as UWIN, eREP, and InterOp Utah, the emergence of leading edge wireless companies in Utah, and Novell's role in network development. I began my work with networks in the early eighties as we began using stuff like cross-talk and satellite communications with the Grid Compass to communicate with the Whitehouse from places like Honduras, and am looking for something to emerge that will really be 21st century.

2003-04-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

RS 2477

Governor Leavitt is preparing to reveal the State's response to the RS 2477 controversy. For several years, we have been accumulating all kinds of data regarding the roads in rural Utah. The database is GISl-enabled with digital photographs that will verify the existence of hundreds of roads. The State has worked closely with counties and other interests throughout the process. We'll soon see the results. Here's an article in the Salt Lake Tribune.

2003-03-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

Since I began using Dreamweaver and other web development applications, I have not upgraded my HTML skills, nor taken the time to try out many new design techniques. Mandarin Design is a weblog that helps maintain these skills. I'm testing one of their suggestions with this post.

2003-03-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

Utah Coalition for Educational Technology

UCET will hold its annual conference on March 7-8, 2003. They will discuss some great issues like handheld technology, standards, networking, integration, and software applications. The mission of UCET is to promote the effective use of technology in Utah education and to provide leadership, support, and a forum for dialog for its members.

Early this week, we met with Jim Stewart and Pete Kruckenburg who have a very good vision for where they want to go with the UEN network. The have engendered a communicative organizational structure through the promotion of individual weblogs throughout the organization. Pete has also developed the Regional Exchange Peering Forum to share ideas between people who are operationg Regional Exchange Points throughout the country. His recent post about the development of the Utah Community Internet Exchange is something that anyone interested in broadband in Utah should review.

2003-02-22T19:49:00.000-08:00

ISTS

The Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth is an excellent source for news and information on information security.

2003-02-22T16:41:00.000-08:00

Echelon Receives NIH Grant

Echelon Biosciences, part of the growing biotech ecosystem in Utah, just received a half a million dollar grant from the National Cancer Institute to explore targets against cancer and diabetes.

2003-02-22T16:37:00.000-08:00

Rising Stars

Utah Business magazine identifies forty "rising stars" throughout Utah that are making a difference. Among them: Darin Brush, deputy director to Raylene Ireland, with the Department of Workforce Services.

2003-02-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

Val Oveson on eGovernment
Val Oveson discussed re-engineering and the ongoing importance of electronic government in Utah at the Tech Expo. Here are a few quotes:

Referring to the eREP project,

"You'll have a Web-based environment so that when a social worker has finished working with a client, they can see all of the services available in all the departments. They can see where the client has been and hasn't been. It's a double-edged sword: It can spot abuse, but it can also spot where they're not taking advantage of resources that can help them."

On motor vehicles,

It is absurd that the Department of Public Safety issues driver's licenses and the Tax Commission registers the vehicles. Those two have interaction and have to get together.

On the legislature,

"Some in the Legislature question whether it's really cost-effective, and do we really have to do this. The answer is obviously 'yes,' and you can't unring the bell, you can't roll back the clock."

2003-02-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

Utah's Best

The following Utah companies received "Best of Technology awards at the Utah Valley Tech Expo.

Best Overall: Altiris
Best Small Company Technology: AtTask Inc.
Best Medium Company Technology: NextPage
Best Large Company Technology: Novell
Best Value Creation: DirectPointe
Best Educational Technology: Dynix
Best Bridge to Consumer: Power Innovations
Most Creative Technology: Arteis

Congratulations. I hope that Utah County can continue its development as a hotspot for innovation.

2003-02-06T21:43:00.000-08:00

Price Wireless

A local provider has set up 802.11 hotspot coverage in Price that blankets almost the entire town. Phil Bates, IT director for the Dept. of Public Safety took a quick fieldtrip down there to see what is happening in light of our initiative to provide statewide wireless services for Utah network customers. We're making progress. Rick Gee has tested a PEAP solution that will work for the majority of users and we have reviewed the Ecutel and NetMotion products for vehicles. We're developing a contract solution for PSI. Public Safety and ITS are working closely with local law enforcement to get them onboard, with Health participating as well.

2003-02-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

Utah Web Services Forum

Utah has begun to use XML, RSS, and web services in a variety of ways in its government operations. As a next step, I expect to plan an XML forum where we will present creative solutions that have been implemented in Utah government. Initially, I think that I'll include the following: Archives use of XML in identifying records collections, the use of XML and GIS by the Department of Natural Resources and AGRC, the XML solution set used in UCJIS, the use of RSS by the State Library, web services and the payment gateway by UII, and XML in public health data exchanges by UDOH. Sounds like an interesting forum. If you're on the list, expect a contact. If you're not and you are interested in attending, send me an email. If we have enough out-of-state interest, perhaps we can do a realvideo broadcast. If you are outside of Utah and have a government XML solution that you might share with us, let me know

2003-02-02T23:22:00.000-08:00

RFIDs

Jenny Levine likes to talk about RFIDs. Ephraim Schwartz says that RFID technology is about to explode.

A paper called The hidden value of Silent Commerce discusses how Associated Foods, a Utah-based company is using RFIDs in its Real Time Locating System.

2003-02-01T20:46:00.000-08:00

Science and Technology Stats

Funding and expenditure stats related to science and technology research and development in Utah

News from Device Logics, another Lindon-based company.

DoD's Software Technology Conference is scheduled for April 28th this year in Salt Lake City.

Surface Acoustic Wave Technology

Java Products in Utah

Government Technology discusses the dangers of promoting technology changes in the political environment.

2003-01-26T21:58:00.000-08:00

Jim's Pond

Jim Stewart is pondering seriously about where to go with his blog and whether to remain active in the blogosphere. I hope his answer his in the affirmative. I have enjoyed the contributions made by this new group of UEN bloggers and would hate to see them take a step backward. Jim's blogs are thoughtful meditations of life and technology.

2003-01-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

Streamlined Sales Tax and other news

The New York Times discusses the streamlined sales tax initiative with quotes from Governor Mike Leavitt.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill N. Parrish and 3rd District Court Judge Ronald E. Nehring were announced as Governor Leavitt's candidates for the Utah Supreme Court during a news conference held in the state Capitol on Saturday afternoon.

Transportation grant will enhanced systems integration in Utah.

Wilson and Webb share their list of potential gubernatorial contenders.

Verdi White and others discuss homeland security in Utah's capital city.

Utah's seized property law is not being enforced.

Big energy costs at Utah colleges.

Academy of Math, Engineering, and Science to open at former Cottonwood High.

2003-01-25T21:02:00.000-08:00

Chronic IT Problems

Network World Fusion reviews six chronic problems that Mark Foreman has identified in federal IT:

1. Paving cowpaths, which describes a trend for agencies to automate management problems instead of using e-business technologies to fix them.
2. Redundant buying, which involves multiple agencies buying the same item independently instead of making use of economies of scale.
3. Poor program management, with few projects delivered on time and on budget.
4. Poor modernization blueprints, with few agencies developing roadmaps for IT investments that improve performance.
5. Islands of automation, which make it difficult for agencies to collaborate on key missions such as homeland security, and for citizens who have to deal with multiple agencies to get service.
6. Poor cybersecurity, whereby IT security was viewed as an IT or funding issue, instead of an agency management issue.

These problems are certainly not unique to the federal government and need to be addressed everywhere.

2003-01-25T07:03:00.000-08:00

Mountain West Economy

An article in the New York Times discusses the impact of the economic downturn on the states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. The impact has been significantly greater in Utah and Colorado due to their increasing reliance on high tech.

2003-01-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

PSAP Registry

The PSAP registry being created by NENA will be a nice resource. I learned where all our PSAPs are located during the process of coordinating the State's efforts for Y2K. Now the registry will be GIS-integrated so that you could look at a dynamic map of all PSAPs in the state or adjoining states. The coordination of PSAP activities in border areas will be facilitated by this and could be a project for NGA-sponsored Interop America.

2003-01-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

Developing Cyber Relationships in Utah

I am learning a lot about UEN and its organizational culture thanks to the recent explosion of UEN blogs. Beginning with Pete Kruckenberg, UEN has added four blogs to the blogging universe in just a few weeks. Today, Pete discusses how blogs have helped him to develop important relationships within his organization. In addition to Pete, Jim Stewart and Troy Jessup have been sharing some great stuff.

Jessup is networking his neighborhood. That is the kind of thinking that led to the creation of Airswitch and their efforts to completely wire Springville and American Fork. Wireless technology makes it even easier. Wouldn't it be cool if we could overlay a wiress mesh network over the entire Wasatch Front.

I think what I have in mind for the State of Utah and local / Federal agencies in the State is something called a MOTERAN - Mobile Telecommunications Radio and Relay Network.

Several vendors, including Salt Lake-based Hotspotzz are providing wireless access at the Sundance film festival in Park City.

The City of Long Beach is providing free hotspot access in its downtown under the banner of economic development. Imagine what we could do in rural Utah by opening up our broadband connection in, say, the UDOT shed in Hanksville - a few key residents add their own connections and you have a mesh network that blankets the town. The whole town becomes a "smart site."

2003-01-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

Utah Ideas

Fred Lampropoulos of Merit Medical has created a new website called Utah Ideas. The stated goal is to share ideas dedicated to making Utah a better place to live.

2003-01-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

Utah's Enterprise Projects

Thanks to Phil Windley for pointing out Governing Magazine's coverage of Utah's process for managing projects at the enterprise level. And to Governor Leavitt for his insight in focusing attention on enterprise solutions. I had a chance to attend the Governor's Christmas open house and he reiterated his intent that enterprise projects move forward as fast as possible. He does not want it to lose momentum as we transition to a new CIO.

2002-12-30T11:27:00.000-08:00

Altiris

eWeek calls Altiris' Client Management Suite the most useful product of 2002.

2002-12-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

Nextel Awarded Mobile Radio Contract

GSA has awarded a major contract for mobile radio services to Nextel. The contract is also available to federally funded state and local emergency responders and is designed to support the overall goal of improved interoperability. I have used my Nextel direct connect phone for over three years now, but we have a declining population of users in Utah state government due to problems with the coverage area.

more in Washington Technology

2002-12-16T21:46:00.000-08:00

Utah a hotspot for medical technology

According to MX, which publishes regular news for the medical device industry, Utah is a hotspot for medical technology and should not be overlooked by companies when considering expansion. According to their profile:

The State of Utah has about 290 biomedical companies. Together, they contribute an estimated $1.8 billion in annual revenues and $1.4 billion (estimated) to Utah's economy. To help support both existing and expanding biomedical companies, the State of Utah recently passed R&D income tax credit incentives. Contact the Economic Development Corp. of Utah via http://www.edcutah.org.

2002-12-08T21:53:00.000-08:00

Broadband Heaven

Edward Mitchell discusses the dearth of broadband access in the Spokane Valley. That strikes me as interesting, especially since Tacoma,the Washington city closest in size to Spokane, is one of the most wired cities in the country. Broadband activity is rampant in Utah, not just the 256k DSL variety, but there are efforts all over the place to implement fibre and wireless 802.11 networks. If I get time, I will create an overlay map with all of the services and their coverage areas.

2002-11-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

eGovernment News Service

Dr. John Gotze of Denmark is providing a great new service for those interested in aggregated egovernment news.

2002-11-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

GIS in Education

According to Directions Magazine, Utah became the third state to implement GIS in all of its schools. A license with ESRI will allow Utah to use GIS software on all of its instructional computers throughout the K-12 system.

In another recent article, Steve Lombardi writes about XML web services, GIS, and location mapping. It is an excellent overview of the technology that I hope will be fully implemented in the recreation.gov project. I think that is Charlie Grymes vision for it as well.

2002-11-07T22:14:00.000-08:00

Cross-Jurisdictional eGovernment

I just stumbled across a September 2002 study on cross-jurisdictional egovernment. This should be interesting. The white paper looks at 23 case studies, such as NILS - the National Integrated Land System which involved the Utah GIS Council.

2002-11-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

Patents and Trademarks

The US Patent and Trademark Office sponsored a seminar last week in the Salt Lake City Library. USPTO has developed egovernment applications for filing patents and trademarks online using authoring tools that help the applicant prepare a patent or trademark specification in XML format. The site also provides a very good search tool. We should reference this site when we create our new State business portal.

2002-11-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

A Victorian eGov Resource List

Multimedia Victoria, a site managed by the government of Victoria, Australia, includes an egovernment resource center with news summaries of egovernment in Utah.

2002-10-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

Security in government

Wade Billings is thinking out loud about the criticality of systems security for state government. Believe me, Wade, I think about security every day. That's one of the main reasons that I'm always nosing around in our IT shops even though they're only an indirect report. That's why I've gotten involved in Infragard and insisted that it needs to be an enterprise project. Nevertheless, our efforts are imperfect and there is an incredible amount of work to be done!

2002-10-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

Give 'em a Laptop!

In a post from this morning, John Robb suggests giving every officer a laptop and letting them blog everything. Basically, that's where we're heading, but we do need a little more structure. I just met yesterday with the new IT director for public safety in the state and he has some excellent ideas and we're making some real progress. Every PSAP / dispatch center in the state now has an XML feed. We also have feeds from over 40 local government agencies that can feed into our integrated criminal justice system that is all XML-based and allows access to multiple data sources through a single secure login. We're involving our GIS people to make this even more effective. We're developing a mobile data network that will extend wireless service to the remotest areas of the state by adding capability to our already existing microwave network sites. And we've got more interesting ideas on the table as recently as this week. We're also working with 11 other states to begin the effort of creating a national capability that extends all of this in a way that will enhance investigations tremendously.

John also mentioned a tool to add SSL to your weblog. I may be needing that soon.

2002-10-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

IT Decision-Making

An article in the current issue of Intelligent Enterprise restates the conclusion reached by the State of Utah during a recent IT enterprise brainstorming process:

Decisions must be made on an increasingly collaborative basis. Some of the most important capital spending decisions in the coming years will involve the intersection of strategic business objectives and IT strategy. Management decision makers and IT leaders must ultimately work together in order to survive — and succeed.

As a result, enterprise IT initiatives are all discussed by the cabinet and the governor on a monthly basis. The article continues by emphasizing the importance of communication during the process. The Governor's chief-of-staff, Rich McKeown recently met with hundreds of IT workers throughout the state over a two day period. Management is also planning to enhance communications with the legislative branch in order to increase the effectiveness of these initiatives.

Finally, the author identifies the IT team as a change agent within the enterprise. Currently, ITS - the state's central IT organization is undergoing a massive change focussed on improving customer service and reliability.

2002-10-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hack Attack

Blogger, the service provider for this weblog experienced an attack this week. Once again points out the need to keep things secure. Our local Infragard Chapter will be meeting again in November on infrastructure assurance.

2002-10-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

Wolf Electronix Fastest Growing

Wolf Electronix of Orem is the fastest growing Utah company. An award was presented by Governor Leavitt during the Eighth Annual Utah 100 Awards.

2002-10-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

Network Associates buys Utah Company

Traxess Inc of Lindon was recently purchased by Network Associates. I had not heard of Traxess, but they are among a growing number of companies in the Lindon technology park. They seem to have no presence on the web other than the announcement of their Aug. 26th buyout. Network Associates purchased Traxess specifically to acquire their DragNet product.

DragNet is designed to operate at Gigabit speeds and enables users to retrieve and analyze information after it has been written onto a patent-pending, next-generation disk storage sub-system. Using this stream-to-disk technology, users are able to reconstruct a Web session, reproduce a transferred file via the file transfer protocol (FTP) process, or recreate a previous email without affecting the capture process.

more info on the purchase

2002-10-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

News from Digital ID World

Frank Paynter:
The State CIO of Utah has a clear, professional, expert understanding of the issues associated with setting up digital id standards and services in a public setting. Check out his blogging of these proceedings. Check also: Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Denise Howell, and AKMA. I'm sure other clear excellent blogging voices will emerge here too. Personally, I'm taking notes in notepad and hardcopy so I can stay with the discussion instead of getting hung up in my bloggery.

Denise Howell comments on Phil Windley's presentation
Tension between privacy and quick, effective interactions with government. Other problems: governments don't realize they're in the identity business, have abdicated the responsibility for identity issues. Big problem is technology can't solve the real identity problems; you need policymakers to solve these problems, but in reality legislators have no specialized training, get lots of information from lobbyists. Citizens need to pay attention to educating legislators about these issues. If citizens aren't involved, the "black helicopter crowd" will make these decisions.

Aggregated News Feeds

2002-10-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

XML in Government

Here it is midnight and I am thinking about why we might want to put together an XML working group here in the state. We have discussed XML in various contexts and in various settings, and yet, in my mind, we have not even scratched the surface of its potential. And not many, aside from state CIO Phil Windley even understand what that potential is. We had our second cabinet meeting today on IT in which the cabinet acts as the managing entity for enterprise IT initiatives. We received some thoughtful feedback from cabinet members such as Dianne Nielsen of the Department of Environmental Quality. Dianne is concerned that the Utah Citizen De irectory project could get derailed in a way similar to a smart card proposal that was submitted to the legislature several years ago. The difference is that the state citizen directory will be entirely at the user's discretion. Citizens will be able to opt in and then determine the specific applications that will have access to their data.

Anyway, back to XML, perhaps we do not need a separate working group, maybe just do a better job training and diseminating information related to Phil's 13 web services principles. Anyway, check out the following excellent references:

"XML Goes to Washington" - excellent articule found in the Oct. 7th issue of Infoworld.
XML.gov is an excellent resource that we need to pay regular attention to.

2002-10-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

Behind the Scenes

It's been a busy day. The bugbear virus seems to be running rampant. I sent Doug Law the latest NIPC info and he made sure that the relevant items get screened. Doug is one of those kinds of people that are always productive and creative, but never get much credit. Doug's software regularly saves the state of Utah from cyber assaults like bugbear. Obviously, we have a lot of other things in place like firewalls, intrusion detection, etc. as well.

A group of Russian hackers took down the State Department's website earlier. Overall, it appears that hack activity has picked up a little lately.

2002-09-27T21:48:00.000-07:00

Blogger Meetup

International Blog Meetup day is on October 16th. There are 19 bloggers signed up from the Salt Lake City area. Other blog meetups are scheduled for Provo and Logan. Area bloggers include Emily Bytheway and Dan Hersam.

2002-09-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

Content Management

Here's an article for Dave McNamee.

2002-09-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

Cyber-security confusion

Infoworld tells us why we need to consolidate and centralize the network security function for the state.

2002-09-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Security Delay

eWeek reports on a delay in the release of the long awaited federal cyber-security plan that was scheduled to be available tomorrow. Instead, a draft will be available for public comment. President Bush will appoint members to the National Infrastructure Assurance Council who will provide input on the plan until November 8th.

2002-09-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

BioSecurity

BioSecurity 2002 mentions that Utah has a great bioterrorism / emergency response glossary. There's some other good information on this site as well.

2002-09-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

RSS 2.0

Phil Wainewright helps clarify the RSS format debate.

2002-09-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

Security Blogs

Infragard of the Wasatch is ready to get moving again with a meeting scheduled for early October. Watch my government and technology weblog for more information. Security is a hot topic in Utah right now and we should see a lot of good cooperation as we move forward.

There are several excellent weblogs focused on security issues. Two of my favorites are The Peanut Gallery and the Security Weblog.

2002-09-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

Digital IQ Goes Blogging

Wasatch Digital IQ, a regional technology magazine, now has a section on blogs. It is new right now, but I hope that this becomes a great resource for the tech community in Utah.

2002-09-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Learnframe

Here's a Utah company in the knowledge management, elearning arena. They were in the Utah high-tech 20 in 2001.