May 25, 2005
Instant Messaging in State Government
I'm looking through NASCIO's Research Brief on instant messaging in state government. Story about it here.
This is interesting:
Due to these security concerns, a best practice in the states is to block state employees’ use of consumer-grade IM services in the workplace. Otherwise, these services pose risks in terms of allowing state employees to circumvent the state’s security measures and the introduction of worms, viruses and the like through unsecured consumer IM services.
In general I think it is okay to stop things like this if you've got a better solution, and the research brief of course has a better solution. The brief recommends that states use enterprise-grade IM services because they can integrate with the states' network and security infrastructure.
Also:
Furthermore, they may include features that will log and archive communications, which can be of assistance in ensuring that IM messages comply with state IM standards and any applicable public records laws or regulations.
The brief gives a list of states that are using IM and that have policies about it.
According to a recent Pew Internet report 46% of the Gen Yers(18-27) report using instant messengers, while 18% of Gen Xers (28-39) use IM. The percentage is even smaller for older generations.
Reminds me of Pew's blog statistics:
Blogging is very much the province of the young. Fully 19% of online Americans ages 18-29 have created blogs, compared to 5% of those 50 and older.
It makes me think. Some governments are concerned about a lot of their employees retiring in the coming years. Maybe a large part of the void will be filled by younger folks right out of school who don't need a lot of money so much as work experience. If that happens, we could see a lot more instant messaging and blogging, and government employees with skill sets that include play station 2, and role playing games.
Update: I just found this article while reading Wayne Hall's blog: Aging to Take Toll on State Workforces. I thought it would be an appropriate article to link to for this post.
May 23, 2005
RSS Government
I've been searching for government RSS feeds today. I think I'm finally going to make the transistion to using an RSS reader a lot instead of looking at Webpages. But RSS feeds are still sparsely populated among government websites.
I've been using Uncle Sam to search for government RSS feeds. Have you heard about Google's Uncle Sam? It's google's government search only search. It only searches government websites.
I found a couple interesting things. King County, in Seattle area, uses del.icio.us to create the RSS feeds for the news on the County's website.
From a New York City Technology Advisory Committee meeting:
Be it resolved:
that better communication between city agencies and between city agencies and the public can be facilitated by the use of RSS.
Therefore:
Queens Community Board 3 requests that all public information be made available in RSS and/or other comparable syndication formats.
Resident Bottom Line: RSS makes it possible to review information from a large number of city websites in a very short time.
Community Board Bottom Line: RSS permits the simple, rapid, and inexpensive distribution of reports, alerts, calendar listings, and other information to residents.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Office has a useful tool to create RSS feed links. It can be used to create a wide range of different feed links that cover information from various agencies.
8:13pm | web technology - egovernment - rss | 2 comments
May 19, 2005
Not Much of a Reporter
I don't think I've properly introduced myself. My name is Nick Mudge. I work for Government Technology magazine.
Everything I say here in this blog is my own opinion.
I am the GT News editor for the Govtech Web site. GT news is the news that appears on the homepage of Govtech and the news that appeared on the homepage in the past. At Govtech we have many news channels, which GT news is only one. I'm responsible for GT News and the Homeland Security channel. I've had this job for over a year now.
Since I'm talking about this, I've also got to say that there is a newsletter for GT News called Government Technology Executive News (GTEN), which I also put together. And I also put together the The Homeland Report, which contains the news from the Homeland Security channel.
I can only take some of the credit for GT News, because our Senior Editor and a channels editor, and Government Technology writers, and lots of news sources contribute to GT news on a daily basis. I'm mostly just an editor always looking for the best government technology stories everyday. Got any? Send them my way please.
I noticed that I link to a lot of stuff on the Govtech Web site. Well, I link to anything I find of interest whether it is on Govtech or not. I'm not starting this blog to talk about Government Technology, but to talk about things I'm interested in, in the government and technology spheres.
I'm interested in a wide area of topics with regards to government and technology.
Specifically, I'm most interested in Web development, RSS, XML, Web services, SOA and identity management, both as themselves and how they apply to government.
I'm also really interested in open source, blogs and community development.
What I want to find out about right now is government IT blogging. The large private sector IT companies have really embraced blogging. There's definitely a business case for companies' employees to blog. Just read the zillion blogs and Web sites about it.
Is there sense in state and local government IT employees blogging? Will public sector IT follow private sector on this one?
I always like how Robert Scoble asks his readers what they think.
What do you think?
11:56pm | web technology - govtech web site - technology governance - egovernment | 2 comments
Recent Web News
Joshua Schachter, creater of del.icio.us, recently started a blog about del.icio.us.
IBM is encouraging all of its employees (130,000+) to blog. IBM also released corporate blogging guidelines.
Microsoft and Sun are going to work together to create single sign-on Web access.
Google recently launched Adsense for RSS/Atom feeds beta. Google ads in feeds.
David Fletcher has a second blog.
Update: Rock Regan has been posting like crazy. I love it!
May 13, 2005
Marc Andreessen Keynote
Yesterday Marc Andreessen, author of Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, keynoted Government Technology Conference West.
Here's the keynote story:
http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=93984
5:36pm | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - egovernment | no comments
May 12, 2005
GTC is Now
The Government Technology Conference West is happening right now.
We're writing up summaries of each day that cover the various keynotes, training sessions, and other things, and putting them on www.govtech.net.
Here are some stories so far:
Can Your Mother Understand This? Former Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer and GIS in the Public Sector
California State Geospatial Data Service Under Discussion
President Theodore Roosevelt Returns to California
More to come!
12:49pm | government resources - govtech web site - egovernment | no comments
May 9, 2005
Wikipedia
There's going to be a story tomorrow on govtech about Wikipedia.
Check out this 2-year Web traffic graph from Alexa.com:
May 6, 2005
IT Departments in Organizations
Just Desserts* is a pretty good article about the relationships of IT departments with management in organizations.
The article mentions Phil Windley's tag line "Organizations Get the IT They Deserve.”
May 4, 2005
Alaska CTO Teleconference
Wayne Hall mentioned that Alaska CTO Stan Herrera will be speaking at a Center for Digital Government teleconference on May 5th.
If your company isn't a member of the Center, then sign up!
If you can't make it, all is not lost. Sometimes someone from Government Technology listens in and writes up a news story about it and it promptly goes up on the Government Technology Web site as part of the news.
May 2, 2005
Technology Roundup
I've found a number of interesting things lately, so to bring things up to speed, and to start off this blog, here's a roundup:
Today I came across an AP article about tagging. Great article. I've found a lot of great stuff on the Web from using tagging and aggregating systems -- and then I was able tag the stuff myself so I'd have it for future reference and wouldn't be lost. But I still haven't found a really good article that explains del.icio.us.
Recently I've been coming across some web history that has interested me. Here's an article on the rise and fall of Netscape Communications. It makes an interesting point about ubiquity. Market share ensures future revenue. "Whoever gets the volume does win in the end. Just plain wins."
Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape is going to keynote at Government Technology Conference West (GTC West) real soon.
An overview of the history of the Web (not the Internet) and predictions of the Web in the future (but the year is 1997). This is an article written by David Siegel about how he and some others ruined the Web. It was written in 1997. I thought the predictions of the Web made in the article were pretty good. The article helps explain to me why there seems to be so many conflicting factors and technology debris in Web development. But from the looks of it, since 1997, it appears that there has been some good progress in putting the Web back together.
I came across the first Web site -- ever. The first Web site was put online on August 6, 1991. Found it when I was looking up Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) in Wikipedia.org.
