Nick Mudge’s Technology and Government Weblog

The state of Nevada has an Information Technology Research Unit.

Here's its Mission:

To research current and emerging areas of technology and other states trends to ensure efficient and cost effective deployment of government services, reduce the risks of innovation through IT analysis, and disseminate relevant information via various outlets.

On it's website to the left it has current links to the information technology departments of all 50 states, and to the right it is displaying GT News using the GT News RSS feed.

10:01am | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - egovernment - rss - best practices | no comments

U.S. Congressman John Conyers recently wrote a very interesting post about why he blogs. Check it out.

You have to read the full post, but one of the things he says is this:

Universally speaking, the experts -- the people who had used the internet so successfully in the Dean campaign -- had one word of caution. So many politicians who were intrigued by the Dean campaign saw the internet as a cash machine and little else. Not only is such a view shortsighted, it is ineffective, as many politicians have seen the internet activists tune them out after the third fund-raising appeal in one week. I decided to follow a different model and became the first Member of Congress to start his own blog with reader comments.

9:29pm | web technology - blogs | no comments

I just added three new blogs to Govfeed.com:

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue blog

Utah Senate Site blog

The First Response Coalition blog

They are now in the Gov. Blog Directory and in the Gov. Blog Aggregator.

9:19pm | web technology - government resources - blogs | no comments

I found Dan Champion's new blog, Blether. He's a local government web manager for Clackmannanshire, Scotland.

Today he writes about Clackmannanshire's website ClacksWeb, accessibility, and usability testing.

I wonder how much usability testing like he says in his post is done in general for websites. I think usability testing is a great thing to do. I read a great book about it called Don't Make Me Think.

What does blether mean?

He says:

Blether is a Scots word which can be used as a verb or a noun. The verb means to chat idly, to chew the fat, to pass the time of day (you get the idea), for example "we were just blethering", as my wife tells me after an hour on the telephone to her sister.

7:41pm | web technology - egovernment - blogs | 1 comment

Govfeed.com now has a Government Blog Aggregator. Right now I'm updating the Government Blog Directory. If you know of any government blogs not in the directory that meet these requirements please let me know.

I've noticed that there are a lot of other government so called blogs on the web besides what is in the directory that don't have RSS feeds. I don't consider something a blog if it doesn't have an RSS feed, so those are not included on Govfeed.com. Like these ones here, here, here, here. Fortunately a majorty have RSS feeds.

11:13pm | web technology - rss - blogs | no comments

Jim Willis from the GOCC blog says, "Government agencies, with their directories full of rotting, static HTML docs, are ripe to skip right to the front of the class in the move to Web 2.0." Hell yea!

9:25am | web technology - xml - open government | no comments

I've seen a lot of talk about Web 2.0 lately. Lot's of discussion about it and what it is. One of the next big buzzword in cyberspace.

I'm actually really excited about it because, to me, it summarizes down to a word many of the great new websites, applications and services I see coming on the Web. The Web as a platform, the Web as an OS.

In the past the idea of the Web has been a bunch of "pages" linked together. With Web 2.0 it's evolving more and more towards the more generic idea of streams of information. A Web page is only one format, one way of displaying an information stream, but there can be many different representations, formats, and relations of streams of information, and the way they interact. I think of Web 2.0 as putting data in more appropriate formats and relations from which it can be better utilized and interacted with.

Om Malik, a writer for Business 2.0 magazine, says in his blog:

I define Web 2.0 as a “collection of technologies - be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever …. that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a platform, and not just a pipe to connect.”

Wayne Hall, from NASTD, has an interesting post. He says:

State government consumers -- you and me, the citizens, the owners of the information held by state government -- could get such services from a set of information tagged and collected by aggregators like Del.icio.us, Flickr or Technorati, instead of using an "end-to-end" state government portal.

Heather Green from BusinessWeek asks the question: Information services or giants (Web portals), what's going to win the masses? Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist has a very good article about it.

New channels are opening up on the Web to better provide, disseminate and make information more useful. Governments can avail themselves of this, as some are starting to do. Some governments are formatting weekly radio addresses as podcasts on the Internet. Rhode Island frees state government information with its public XML Web service. Some state governments are putting their press releases and information in RSS feeds.

Tim O'Reilly has an article all about What is Web 2.0?.

Dave Winer (author of Really Simple Syndication, RSS 2.0) says, "Web 2.0 is really simple, it's RSS 2.0"

8:35pm | web technology - technology governance - egovernment - rss - xml - blogs - open standards - open government | no comments

I moved Nick's Daily Picks to its own blog.

1:36am | web technology - blogs | no comments

In my opinion Govtech.net had one of its best months ever in September in terms of a lot of good content.

Here are the articles and news I found notable:

GT Mag Stories:

GT Online Features:

Digital Communities Website

News:

10:33pm | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - egovernment - xml - identity - SOA - enterprise architecture - wireless - best practices - open source - open standards - open government - security - workforce | no comments

I've always really enjoyed reading Kim Cameron's Identity weblog. He posts great stuff and he's involved with a very hot, open and interesting identity and web community, and it really shows on his blog.

One of the things that really fascinates me about blogs like Kim Cameron's is that expert information and experience is right there in an easily readable format to be understood. A person could read these blogs and learn all about identity, the web, etc. right there, from experts in their fields -- can even ask them questions through comments and email. I think a lot of these bloggers are also trying to be understood well and understand more things better themselves. I think the result is that they are leaving an easily followable trail of growing understanding. All the associations, relations, connections, and conversations that lead to conclusions which are further refined, conversed, and concluded -- they are all right there in the trail of the blog.

Reminds me of a related idea, the Web documenting itself, which blogging plays a large part. I'm sure people have said the Web is self documenting. It is. It has to be because for the Web to evolve and get better people have to agree about things about the Web and so we communicate to each other about what's going to be done and establish agreement. We largely communicate on the web and the web records the communication. The recorded communication on the web holds agreements firm, and we advance from there. Our combined and recorded knowledge is the platform from which we advance -- the web is in that way a platform, besides being a programming development platform i.e. Web 2.0.

Kim has a really interesting piece up by Eric Norlin about the Web as a platform. Very good reading. I love it!

Kim recently wrote about a couple of Govtech.net stories: Authenticating Candidate Websites and Government Technology on Outsourcing Intelligence.

I put the candidate website one together last week. Outsourcing Intelligence is an excellent feature story by Jim McKay, Government Technology magazine's justice and public safety writer.

Kim also wrote some really nice things about Government Technology and my blog. One of the things he wrote about was relations established through the Web:

Nick Mudge is clearly interested in identity issues. In one piece, where he is really talking about how bloggers affect perception, he says:

Personally, I started liking Microsoft a lot more after I found and started reading Robert Scoble's blog and Kim Cameron's blog. (Kim Cameron, Microsoft's identity architect.)

As long as Kim is in control of how identity systems are developed, deployed and managed, I'll be okay with what Microsoft wants to do with identity. I got that confidence through reading Kim's blog. If you don't trust Microsoft with identity, go read Kim's blog for awhile. Send me an email about what you think afterwards.

This is an amazing example of how blogging changes things. Because of my blog, Nick understands what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, and what motivates me. Having followed my blog for a while, he has connected with the network of ideas that guide my work. The trust that has developed is based on an ongoing intellectual relationship - even though we have never met or corresponded.

And guess what? I'm going to understand a lot more about eGovernment and digital governance by having discovered Nick's site.

He describes my frame of reference and state of mind exactly. Amazing!

12:59am | web technology - blogs - identity - public relations | no comments