5 technologies changing our world
Government operations transformed by better communications, enhanced mobility

A technology isn’t disruptive because of what it is as much as how we choose to use it.

I’ve spent the past decade writing about technologies predicted to be the most disruptive in the industry, and to be quite frank, it’s usually a tough story to write. In most years, the technological disruption is coming from very high-tech areas, such as the Semantic Web, virtualization or cloud computing. And it can often be difficult to connect the dots.

However, during the past two years, the disruption seems to have shifted toward communications, and five specific technologies are taking center stage in advancing how, where and when we choose to express ourselves, our ideas and our data.

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first published week of:   04/11/2011

6 keys — and a caveat — to winning bigger contracts

State CIOs believe they recently took a step toward stronger collaboration with their federal counterparts. More than 30 state CIOs were in Washington, D.C., in early May for the NASCIO Midyear Conference, and a delegation from the group held a highly productive meeting with members of the federal CIO council.

“t really was historic,” said Oregon CIO Dugan Petty, one of the participants. Petty and others said the meeting could pave the way for agreements on data standards that simplify and expand information sharing between state and federal agencies. It also could lead to new flexibility on federal funding rules that, according to state CIOs, encourage the development of inefficient, stovepipe IT systems.

For years, state CIOs have complained that rules for federally funded/state-administered programs often specify which hardware must be purchased and how it must be used. That encourages development of redundant systems and increases costs at both the federal and state levels. “If we were allowed to take more of an integrated approach, that would fit into our IT environments much more effectively and efficiently than what we are seeing today,” said NASCIO President Kyle Schaffer, CIO of West Virginia.

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first published week of:   07/11/2011

A Broadband Boom in the Boondocks
A massive injection of spectrum might be about to revolutionize the digital infrastructure of rural America

For a glimpse of the wireless future, take a look at the Yurok Indian reservation, an out-of-the-way spot just south of the California-Oregon border at the mouth of the Klamath River. There, among the giant redwoods, stand three new towers built to create a new type of wireless network, known as “super Wi-Fi.”  If the U.S. Federal Communications Commission gets its way, super Wi-Fi will become a key part of rural America’s digital infrastructure.

Most people living on the Yurok’s 63,000-acre reservation lack phone service. Almost none have high-speed Internet. The new towers aim to fix both problems. Unlike regular Wi-Fi networks, which are generally limited to beaming high-speed Internet around a house, super Wi-Fi promises to blanket entire neighborhoods with high-speed access.

A Yurok tribal spokesman says the new signals will reach even into the steep-walled valleys that play havoc with most wireless signals. The tribe plans to start testing the system this week.

The FCC is so enthused with the idea of super Wi-Fi that it took the idea nationwide last month, issuing final rules that will free any town or county to do what the Yurok have done.  On Monday, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski proposed a way to pay for much of that infrastructure that would be needed to support municipal Super Wi-Fi. He wants to convert the current system of rural phone subsidies, which now total $8 billion a year, into a more modern system that can pay for things like super Wi-Fi.

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first published week of:   02/21/2011

Alabama's Crisis Management Executives Offer Insights on April 27th Tornado Outbreak

The fifth annual Rocket City Geospatial Conference will host Spencer Collier, the director of Homeland Security for the state of Alabama, and Art Faulkner, the director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency. Each will address issues related to how emergency response personnel reacted to the events of April 27th and were subsequently embedded with Federal Emergency Management Agency staff to support relief efforts in the aftermath. In addition, both will be part of a public forum about the applications of geospatial technology in use around the state as the Alabama Geographic Information System Executive Council meets at the conference.

Mr. Faulkner will speak at 1:45 p.m. on November 15 in the auditorium of the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. Mr. Collier will speak on the same day and at the same location at 4:10 p.m.

“It is rare that we have the two senior state executives responsible for emergency response efforts available to speak at the same forum,” said Joe Francica, conference chairman. “The events of April 27th are still fresh in everyone’s mind and these individuals will report on how we might better address natural disasters in the future.”

The event will also host the Alabama Geographic Information Systems (GIS) conference. It will attract local and state government professionals and businesses that utilize digital mapping technology and GIS for applications such as environmental protection, economic development, urban planning and critical infrastructure management.

The conference will be held November 15 and 16, 2011 in the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This conference will feature an array of user case studies, technical sessions and vendor presentations through a series of organized tracks.

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first published week of:   10/31/2011

Amazon, Overstock Flee California in Wake of New Tax Law

Following California Gov. Jerry Brown’s Wednesday, June 29, signing of a bill requiring out-of-state retailers to pay sales tax on online transactions conducted within the state, Amazon and Overstock.com made good on threats they’d abandon their in-state affiliate companies who offer products via the retail outlets.

Some 25,000 companies within the state are Amazon or Overstock affiliates. In order to continue earning referral commissions, Amazon notified affiliates they’d need to move their operations out of California.

Many of about 25,000 affiliates in California, especially larger ones with dozens of employees, are likely to leave the state, Rebecca Madigan, executive director of trade group Performance Marketing Association, told the Los Angeles Times. The affiliates combined paid $152 million in state income taxes last year, she pointed out.

In a letter to affiliates, Amazon attempted to explain its position on the new legislation.

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first published week of:   07/04/2011

Army, GSA, Recovery.gov, USDA blaze a trail into the cloud

In December 2010, the General Services Administration announced it was moving 17,000 employees and contractors from a series of 17 fragmented, disparate e-mail systems onto a single cloud-based platform: Google Apps. About the same time, the Agriculture Department moved 120,000 users from its on-premises e-mail and productivity applications to the cloud. In this case, it was Microsoft Online Services including Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. The savings were about $27 million due to consolidation of about 21 different systems.

In May 2010, Recovery.gov, a public website that helps people track spending under the economic stimulus law, moved to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platform, saving about $750,000, all of which was funneled back into the mission to fight fraud. As these examples demonstrate, the government is seeing significant adoption of and benefits from the cloud. And with the February release of the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, the list is only going to get longer as CIOs and IT executives move toward the goals of consolidating data centers and shifting from an asset ownership mentality to a service provisioning mentality by leveraging cloud computing.

“We have, for the first time, a federal CIO who has cloud at the top of his agenda,” said Deniece Peterson, senior manager of federal industry analysis at research and market intelligence firm Input. ”Vivek Kundra is putting forth an aggressive timeline, and agencies are going about things slowly looking at low-risk areas and deploying the cloud with care.“

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first published week of:   07/04/2011

Volume 31

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